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CONSIDERATIONS

ON

THE POOR LAWS.

BY

JOHN DAVISON c*
M.A.

FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.

OXFORD,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS FOR J. PARKER.

Sold also by J. MURRAY, Albemarle Street 5


and by
LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, and BROWNE,
Paternoster Row, London.

1817.
TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE

WILLIAM STURGES BOURNE M. P.

CHAIRMAN
OF

THE SELECT COMMITTEE


OF

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,


APPOINTED IN THE LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

ON THE

POOR LAWS;
THESE FEW PAGES
ARE INSCRIBED,

WITH A GREAT AND SINCERE RESPECT,

BY HIS OBEDIENT HUMBLE SERVANT,


Oxford,
Oct. 10, 1817. THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.

1 HE author of the following pages is well

aware of the difficulty of the subject of the

Poor Laws, when it is to be taken up with a


view to any practical amendment of them.
If therefore he should seem, in the course of

stating what he has wished upon them,to say

to have expressed himself any where with less

hesitation and mistrust of judgment, than a

question of such acknowledged intricacy re-

quires, he has done so only to save some tedi-

ousness in the form of putting his opinions,

and begs, by declaring his sense of that diffi-

culty once for all, to be acquitted of the indis-

cretion of speaking confidently to others, where


he himself would be glad to see his way with
more certainty.
The very crowd of publications which have

already appeared in this same line of inquiry,

serve in some measure perhaps to excuse


may
B
11

one more. .In fact, in the promiscuous specu-

lation which commonly falls upon a public


question, there is a service which even ordi-

nary men are capable of; as it comes within


the reach of very moderate sense soberly ap-

plied, to pitch upon particular parts of a sys-

tem, and canvass the reason of them, or ascer-


tain their effect, with tolerable exactness : and
this is
something done, though the stress of

duty for the practical statesman is still behind.

He has to make up mind upon the effect


his

of the whole in its combined result; and taking


one step further, has to connect plans of pro-

posed improvement with interests not always


easy to be ascertained, before the experiment

upon them has been risked. Still the more


confined sketches of argument, which attempt

to work out any of the details of the mixt

question, may assist in giving some one ele-

ment or other towards the more comprehen-


sive practical arrangement. And the chance

of doing so much, is the real apology for those

who may wish to throw in their share to the

speculations of the day, but who neither ima-


Ill

gine they have any thing of much conse-

quence to offer, nor yet would choose to put


three sentences together in print with a cer-

tainty of their being useless.


All reasoning on such a subject as the Poor

Laws must be idle, that is not supported by

a real knowledge of the state of things in the

country as it stands under these laws ; and

existing factsmust shape the anticipated ex-

perience by which any given alteration of


them is to be judged of. Instances and parti-
cular cases therefore commonly make a figure

in most of the publications, which either de-


scribe what is, or recommend what should be.

The author of these remarks has of course his

facts and examples in view, such as his oppor-


tunities of observation (it has been very li-

mited) have afforded : but he has not brought

them forward to justify his notions by them.


He has declined doing it, as well because par-

ticular cases, unless they are strong and ag-

gravated, make little impression in the recital,

and in proportion as they are aggravated be-

yond the common average, though they catch


B 2
IV

exceedingly the popular understanding, they


are of the less real value in general reason-

ing ;
and also because his assumptions will

by the experience of those


either be justified

who may happen to read them or if they ;

which they
are not so justified, the facts from

have been drawn would be equally met and

opposed by the reader's own contrary expe-


rience.

It may be necessary to mention, that the

substance of these Considerations was reduced

to writing in the month of June last, in order

to explain why the allusion made in them to

the plan of a fund of parochial contribution

among the Poor themselves, is expressed under


a doubt whether any such plan would actually

be proposed or recommended. That doubt is

now removed, by the distinct recommendation,


which the plan has subsequently received.
CONSIDERATIONS
ON

THE POOR LAWS.

1 HEPoor Laws, as they stand at this day in

system and in practice, having modified, and in


some degree having made the condition, such as
it now of the labouring class, which is the
is,

most numerous class of the community; any


change of those laws, whether in the system
or the application of them, should be made
with such caution and leniency towards the
persons whose interests have been so incorpo-
rated with them, as shall render the transition
of change gradual and easy in its effect, and
tolerable to the prejudice which has been per-
mitted to work itself into the minds and cal-
culations of the poor. Whether it might not
be just strictly in the abstract to withdraw
from them even at a very short notice any

holding of supposed advantage which may


have been conceded to them improperly and
unwisely at the first, with wrong towards
B 3
6
others, and with much mistake towards them-
selves, is a questionnot necessary t o be argued.
In a legislative arrangement it cannot be con-
sidered as practically just and fair, as it cer-

tainly would not be wise, to shock, by a sud-


den resumption, any kind of claim which has
been supported and encouraged by the prece-
dent of a general and established usage of en-

joyment. To force a new condition, without


allowing time for the adaptation of circum-
stances and feelings, is not consistent with the

principles of that sound and genuine equity,


which upholds the connexion between the
legislature and the subject.
But in prospective legislation, the more
severe the rule is made, and the more rigor-
ously the line is drawn, to the exclusion of
undue claims, or claims of a doubtful, still
more if they be of a mischievous kind, the
better the legislative arrangement ; better,
is

both for the security of the public interest so


guarded, and also for the more clear and pre-
cise statement of the course of duty prescribed
to the individual.
Under the first of these two general princi-

ples, it seems advisable that all modifications


of the existing laws, as applicable to persons at
this present time entitled to parochial relief,
or to the claim of it, should be made with
great considerateness and reserve, and should
be calculated rather for an adjustment by com-
promise of obstinate difficulties, than upon the
larger views of independent and unembarrassed
legislation.
But under the second general principle, in
the case of persons who at this time have no
title to such relief, nor
any necessary access
to the claim of it, the course of enactment

should be different, as the subject to which it


is to be
applied is different. Here the ground
is and open; and the wisdom of the legis-
clear
lature can make its own dispositions upon it.

Consequently the strong sense of any one im-


portant maxim of policy or of justice, ought to
be exhibited on the face of the public arrange-
ment to be made prospectively, by the most
pure and absolute expression of the law in its

favour.
To restrain or reduce an existing inconve-
nience is the object in the first case. To keep
an inconvenience excluded is the object in the
second. In the one, much must be conceded
to past mistake 5
in the other, nothing ought
to be conceded, to the infringement of the in-
terest in question.

Under these two leading ideas I have in-


B 4
8
tended to keep the main drift of the following
considerations. To pretend to turn to any thing
like a general maxim
every step would be to
at

strain things absurdly to an affected regularity,

and would prevent each point from being con-


sidered on its own merits. I have gone there-
fore upon such general maxims only so far as
to take a first bias and direction from them;
but shall endeavour in the detail of inquiry to

follow the nature of the ground afterwards as


it
may happen to lie. The express and tech-
nical application of them will be brought in
more distinctly in the end.
The considerations themselves will be di-
rected chiefly to the following heads of in-

quiry The provision for the dependent poor,


:

whether able to w ork,


r
or unable the policy
of a parochial subscription fund the possibi-

lity
of finding a supply of work for those
who may be thrown out of employ the
amendment of the administration of the law
the management of work-houses the artificial

regulation of agricultural wages by poor-rates


the effects of the existing law upon the habits
and manners of the poor and, lastly, the ex-
pediency of a new legislative arrangement to
be prospective.
If we take up the case of persons now de-
9
pendent, or liable to be dependent, upon paro-
chial relief, we should have them divided into
two general descriptions, obviously requiring a
distinct and separate consideration; the first,

of those who are not able to work 5 the second,


of those w ho are
T
able, but cannot find employ.
The case of those who cannot work is
of the easier consideration. By the law at

present they have a claim of relief, and this


relief ought, probably, to be continued to

them, without discrimination of cases or per-


sons, except for the amount of the relief to be

given according to exigency of want. I say

probably, because upon the whole it would


be most fair and practicable. For although
the present want of some of these persons,
under their disabled state, may be owing to
former improvidence, and consequently not in
itself, nor in the reason of the thing, a sufficient

title to relief; the selection of the provi-


still

dent, and the exclusion of the improvident, by


a review of their past and means, would
life

be a business of impracticable trouble and un-


certainty. The present usage therefore must
be continued for some time, to make the parish
responsible for the support of all who are dis-
abled from work, without exception.
If however any criterion could be establish-
10
ed whereby to resist the claims of destitute

improvidence, it would be highly expedient to


have recourse to such a criterion for the future.
reported that the Committee of the House
It is

of Commons appointed to revise the Poor


Laws, have it in contemplation to recommend
a system of subscription to a common paro-
chial fund by the poor themselves, and the
actual subscribing to such a fund to be made a
condition of subsequent assistance from the

parish. If this plan of subscription to a paro-


chial fund should ultimately be adopted, it

would supply what is now


wanting, a simple
criterion of the providence of the parties. I

shall state presently more at large what I think

of such a fund. In the mean time, it mani-


festly might be made to have this kind of use,
to furnish a rulewhereby to know what per-
sons had used any economy and forethought
for themselves when they were in health and

strength, and would so far supply the defect


of the title upon which relief is often de-
manded by the impotent and disabled. For, it
cannot be insisted upon too strongly, that mere
disability to work does not constitute of itself
a sufficient equitable claim to a certain legal
maintenance. If a man were to throw away
his bread, because at this moment he is not
11

hungry, although he might be hungry and un-


provided in the course of a few hours, nobody
would say that he deserved to have a loaf given
him when his time of hunger and privation ar-
rived. The case is the same on a larger view
of life: and there is no account to be given,

why reasonable beings should not understand


the natural condition upon which they live,
and learn to act accordingly. Disability to
work, and want under that disability, may
come, probably will come, in the common
course of things. If a person have given no

proof of a desire to provide at all for himself


against such seasons, the fault and the suffer-
ing ought to go together; at least the law
ought not to indemnify him against the penal-
ties of his improvidence, without check or ex-

ception.
Asubscription then to the common paro-
chial stock might be made useful to improve
and certify the claim of parties afterwards

applying for relief, upon the plea of inability


to work, as it would serve also to create, in a
fair way, a part of the fund for their actual

maintenance, when they came to be disabled


from maintaining themselves by their labour.
But
since habits of a totally different kind
have been encouraged by the laws heretofore,
12
and the means and resources of the poor have
been wasted by those habits the demand of
;

any subscription ought to be made (if such a


measure should be adopted) with great in-
dulgence, both as to the amount of it, and as
to the length of the term of subscription after
which the right of assistance from their parish
should be acquired.
It should be recollected that the poor dis-

abled from work, of whom we are now speak-

ing, will be of two kinds, as the disability it-


self may be either permanent or temporary.

The permanently disabled, whether reduced to

that state by the wear of old age, by loss of


limbs, or incurable infirmity, are those who have
the best right to all that the law can ever pre-
tend to do. They stand foremost in deserving
its full protection. But the other class, viz.

those who under a temporary incapacity


suffer

only, would not have so clear a right. The


law never can intend to provide against every
article and minute portion of such distress.

At any rate, their applicationthe parish


to

ought to be discouraged: and to check the be-


ginnings of such a correspondence with the
parish, it seems expedient that no relief should
be allowed, till their disability, of a palpable
kind, had lasted some time, as one month or
13
two. For so long a time, their own
economy
and private benevolence together, should be
left to take care of them. And
considering
the greater activity of private
charity which
would follow, if the law did not profess to do
so much, and the extensive relief already af-
forded by the circle of our benevolent institu-
tions, which are at hand with some kind of aid
in almost every instance of
suffering, there is
little reason to think that
any severe, and at
the same time unmerited, distress, would be
suffered, by this delay of legal interference,
even if it were extended to a longer term.
have adverted to the plan of a Parochial
I

Fund to be raised in part by contribution from


the poor, becausesome such plan seems to be
much thought of; and if it should receive
countenance from the recommendation of so
high an authority as the Committee of the
House of Commons, it would then become a
most important object of consideration. In
the ignorance whether it may receive any such
sanction or no, and under what form it may
be recommended, if at all, I beg to be under-
stood as speaking of only as a project of
it

floating speculation. Having admitted one use


of such a fund, as a test for the subscribers'
certificate for relief under disability, I should

stop there, confining it


rigidly to that single
14

object and deprecate most earnestly the ap-


;

plication of it to any other purpose what-


ever. For if it be designed to favour and
facilitate any manner the present promis-
in

cuous grant of parish assistance, and enable


the parish more effectually to discharge its

multiplied obligations in all their extent ; one


of the main defences against the unlimited
and universal spread of pauperism in the coun-
try would be done away, by that very fund,
the discredit of parochial dependence and ;

at the same time the aggregate of claims accu-

mulate in a fearful ratio. The discredit of that

dependence would then be shaken in the very


principle of the thing. For the moral and ade-
quate right acquired by contribution would make
the claimants consider themselves as drawing

upon their own stock; as using their own pro-


perty j as taking back with some interest what
they had lent to the parish. Their actual con-
tribution would of course be only a small part
of the amount of their subsequent demands. But
the parish books would seem to them only a
more profitable kind of funded account, from
which, as proprietors, they drew a return of a
doubled capital, and the loss of independent
character in the transaction would be no more
than follows from taking home a dividend from
the bank. If a large gain is not to be allowed to
15

the subscribers, a hardship upon them to


it is

oblige them, and a delusion to invite them, to


subscribe, only to have their own money again,
in the shape of legal charity ; and if there is to
be a large gain, the temptation to traffick in
such profitable pauperism is a manifest and

pregnant danger. The power of subscribing


must be open and general: indeed the law must
be supposed to invite all, who by any possi-
bility be reduced to want hereafter, to
may
secure themselves by entering their names as
subscribers. The most probable obvious con-

sequence would be a vast influx of needy expec-


tant contributors ;
and the responsibility of
the parish would be pledged to them all, as
soon as they had opened their account with it.
If therefore the present obligations and en-

gagements of the parish are to be continued,

under the usual heads and pleas, of loss of


W ork,
7
insufficient wages, family of children, oc-
casional illness, and others, the incalculable ex-
tension of its debtor concerns in the number of

parties instantly and irrevocably connected with


it, is the first result which threatens to follow

upon the experiment. The pressure of this


weight of incumbrance upon the parish could
not be effectually counteracted by a diminution
of the scale of allowances, any more than the
16

evilof the present practice could be effectually

repressed by a stated and positive diminution


of the allowances now usually granted : be-
cause it not by the rate of the allowance,
is

but by the heads and reasons of the allowance,


that the evil has arisen. It is not by encourag-

ing the poor to expect something from the pa-


rish, that they become the heavy burthen upon

it;but by encouraging them to expect that

something, whatever it be, on such and such ac-


counts, and under such and such circumstances.
When the reason and ground of the demand is
once established; or professed to be continued,
the measure of allowance will force itself, as it

has done, by the exigency of each person who


has the ground and reason to prefer in his par-
ticular case. It is the avenue of claim, not the

amount of it, the spring of the evil.


that is A
parish fund therefore so constituted, for general
purposes, would be a permanent nucleus for a
growing and ruinous embarrassment to the
whole internal system of the country. The pa-
rochial taxes would most probably be swelled in
theiramount by the increase of dependents upon
them, notwithstanding the sums contributed by
the dependents themselves. But even if the rates
were lowered, the mass of account and agency
in the parish concerns would be infinitely ex-
17
tended and the character of an independent
;

working class more and more lost and absorbed


in the connexion.

I have so little confidence in my own esti-

mate of expedients wholly new, that I should


hardly know whether to wish the experiment
of fund to be made, even for the single
this

and confined object which I have already men-


tioned ;
and one reason for hesitating about
this simple use of it, would lie in the difficulty

of disposing of the case of parishioners living


at a distance from their parish. How is the
contribution of absentee parishioners to be
drawn ? and how are their rights to be affected,
ifthey do not contribute ? Perhaps some new-
regulation to be made for the express purpose
of modifying the conditions of parish settle-
ment, might smooth the difficulty. But this is
still to be done. The objections however are
quite clear and positive against bringing any
cases and concerns whatever within the range
of such a fund, except the broad and palpable
one of disabled strength of body and limbs
under a state of destitution. This is a condi-
tion of suffering and privation that cannot be
mistaken: it is be simulated by
not liable to

imposture; it implies no suspicion of fault; it


is incapable of farther service to the commu-

c
18

nity; it is
especially sacred by a reverence of

nature; and not tempting to abuse, as a


it is

person would not subscribe to a fund under a


wish of soon finding himself in the list of crip-
ples or incurables, in order to profit by his

subscription. These are distinguishing circum-


stances to invite the especial care of the law :
and they make the exercise of that care per-
fectly safe. All other cases and pleas, as loss
of work, insufficient wages, family of children,
occasional illness, house-rent, &c. which now
come within the scope of public relief, have
been found to be so many distinct sources of
idleness, dishonesty, vice, and perplexity to
the affairs of the country.

Upon popular topic of a contribution to


this

a parish fund, I venture to affirm, that it is not


fit that the poor should subscribe for the relief

of one another. Pecuniary charity is not their


duty : it is out of their province. Their own
real wants forbid and they have not the
it;

feeling which such a sacrifice requires. In no


way are they made for it. And to try to make
them generous, w hen they have more neces-
r

sary and more attainable virtues to acquire, is


to misplace the attention we bestow upon them.
Benefit societies among the lower classes of the

poor are vicious on this account. They profess


19
to offer a mutual guarantee against the casual-
ties and contingencies of life, as well as its more
certain ordinary wants, out of a property too
small to be exposed to the risks of other men's
fortunes: and the history of such associations,
in the discontent of them, the complaints of
unfair distribution, and the manoeuvres prac-
tised upon the direction of the funds, is partly

a proof that the exercise of this mutual charity


in money and kindness is not to be had among
persons, whose hope and aim of gaining by
the partnership disavow the pretence of a per-

fectly common benefit. If axioms were of any


worth in practical politics, I should venture to
offer two as the simplest and the very best for

putting the affairs of the poor in a right train :

the first, that every man should work for him-

self,which has been rudely discountenanced


by the practice of our Poor Laws and the ;

next, that every man should save for himself,


an axiom which benefit clubs, combined paro-
chial funds, and some other plans, trample
under foot. Upon this new ground he would
neither draw from the public, which has been
the practice already tried, nor would the pub-
lic draw from him, which, I must think, is the

converse mistake.
" In medium is a tempting senti-
qucerunt"
C 2
20
ment. seems to be in the way both to bene-
It

volence and wealth. It is the sentiment by

which the Roman poet has described the eco-


nomy of a hive and a still greater poet of our
-,

own has told us, that the inhabitants of a hive

may teach " the art of order to a peopled king-


" dom." But men are not bees, as in many
other respects, so in this ; that the love of pro-

perty, exclusive property, and aversion from


labour, make no part of the natural history
of that wise insect; but in man they are cha-
racteristic; and they are set off in him one
against another. They ought to be kept well
together. He has his sympathies ; but it is not
in the first instance with his hive, but within
his cell, with his family. The poor man's en-
deavours can hardly extend any further. For
him, the principle of joint labour and commu-
nity of acquisition is put where it ought to be,
when it is infused into his lesson of domestic
duty. His capacity of feeling and exertion is
just commensurate with it there. It fills his

;
little circle: more is too much for him.

The value of benefit societies, is


among such
persons in society as are tolerably safe in a
competency of subsistence, and have some
surplus besides to lay out, upon the fate of
which they can reckon without anxiety. The
21

stake of the club ought to be upon the optional


or occasional comforts, not upon the
necessary
subsistence of its members; otherwise
they
are gaming for their bread. Remedies to the
Poor Laws must be sought in provisions
appli-
cable to persons not quite so high in the world
as those for whom benefit societies are calcu-
lated. These associations indeed keep
may
some from falling upon the parish, but they
are not so likely to discharge and take off those
who are just within itsSuch per-
connexion.
sons require the most stimulating inducement
of gain to be quite their own, and the fears of
want to be wholly their own also. It should
be constantly remembered, that is not merely
a security against misfortune that is wanted
for them, but an antidote to their imprudence
and neglect and misconduct. Community of
fortune by association, upon the principle of a
mutual assurance, is a fair provision against
loss but a most unfair one against delinquency
;

and folly. It makes the good pay forfeit for

the bad, by the very tenour of its rules.


When the underwriters insure, or when mer-
chants do it
mutually for each other, it is
against
sea-risk, against damage by accident ;
and there-
fore the ship, to be a proper subject of insur-

ance, must be sea-worthy, and there must be a


c 3
22
sufficient pilot on board. There is reason in
this. What wouldthey think of an indis-
criminate guarantee upon timbers of every
sort, sound and unsound ? So when a life-
office insures, the life in question must not
be in a deep consumption. In every case a
certain worthiness of condition precedes the

guarantee. Unless therefore a survey shall be


ordered, and a report made, upon the charac^
ter of the parties to be combined together in

parochial associations, it never can be other


than mistake and fraud, to engage them that

they shall mutually indemnify one another,


against any thing more than casualties, or
events absolutely out of their own power, and

wholly independent of their manner of acting.


A mixed contribution from rich and poor
together, would be liable, as I have endea-
voured to shew, to the greatest objection of
all, if it is to create a fund for general pur-

poses, open to thesame forms of demand as


now subsist. The poor would flock in to the
subscription, which would be all for their
benefit and the multitude of indigent part-
;

ners, what by their numbers, what by the con-


fidence of an acquired creditable right, would
drain such a fund more rapidly than they have
ever drained the parochial taxes. The property
23
and the character of the two
parties would be
more and more approximated and confounded.
Indeed any fund whatever, appropriated to the
multifarious purposes which are now within
the scope of parish relief, would be insufficient
to meet the demands accruing upon it, if the

poor are to be admitted to an interest in it by


their becoming contributors. A fund for such
extensive purposes could not possibly be had by
contribution among the poor themselves. The

subsisting practice therefore, of assessments


upon the property of the other class alone, to
be extorted by the occasion, is the only, or the
best way of resisting and checking the pressure,
as long as the present vague and promiscuous
range of relief is
attempted to be continued.
As the result of these considerations, if there
be any weight in them, I conceive that the
destination of a fund into which the poor

might be invited to subscribe, should be strict-


ly confined to a provision for them against the
extreme hardship of bodily infirmity, perma-
nent and irremediable; that the contribution
from the poor themselves should.be on the
sole and separate account of each individual;
that his deposits should be moderate, neither
to press too much upon his current wants, nor
to lay the whole weight of the provision for

c 4
24
that particular purpose upon himself; and, as
a most necessary stipulation of justice, in or-
der that he may never lose by the exercise of
his economy, that the full amount of his con-

tributions, if they should happen not to be ulti-

mately withdrawn by his own personal want,


or the remainder of them, should be restored
at his decease to his family, or other represen-

tatives of blood; or perhaps, in default of near


kin, as he might direct. Whether one stated
rate of deposit should be fixed, to insure a
stated amount of provision, or whether the rate
of deposit should be left to the option and
convenience of the parties, and a proportionate
rate of provision be granted upon it, would be
a subordinate point to consider. Either way
has its recommendations.

With regard to the second general descrip-


tion of persons, now entitled by the usage of
the law to parochial relief, " those who are able
to work, but who cannot find employ;" some
<c

test of their previous economy is as reasonable,

and as much wanted, as in the former case,


before the parish should pretend to charge itself
with the care of them. But their qualification
on that score being supposed, or being waved
for the present; there remains the question,
25
whether it be possible to find work for them,
and how it is to be furnished.
According to
the view which be taken of the possibility
may
of finding an adequate supply of work, the

system of arrangement for them ought ne-


cessarily to be shaped.
For that they ought to
be employed, if work can be found for them, I
presume, is on all hands agreed.
Labourers and mechanics are thrown out of
employ by a reduction of the relative demand
for labour that relativeness being taken upon
;

the numbers who want the employ, compared


with the absolute amount of it ; and this re-

duction of demand may be either temporary


in cause, or of longer continuance. Plans for
its

providing employment under a temporary di-


minution of the ordinary demands of it may be
framed with tolerable effect, in the light of
mere expedients, and as measures of momen-
tary relief; but not as measures of direct public
utility and as such they may act in a reme-
:

dial against the occasion, but can never


way
be regarded as integral parts of the national
prosperity. The reason why they are prac-
ticable at all, is, that it will always be possible,
in a benevolent and opulent country, to make a
forced effort, and turn the edge of a momen-

tary pressure for the whole national resources


5
26
are not in the ordinary course of things strain-
ed to their maximum of effect, but leave
something more to be done by the exertions
of local or personal public spirit. On the
other hand p the reason why such artificial ex-
ertions are incapable of a continued and a be-
neficial application, is, that the generosity and
the sacrifice necessarily combined with them
must secretly be wasting the resources of the
country; and the arrangements made for them,
not being founded in the natural motives and
calculations of life as developed in trade and
commerce, cannot produce the effect of trade
and commerce in the increase of individual or
public wealth and, as far as they are adverse
;

to those motives and calculations, they must

produce an opposite effect.

If therefore in any country there be causes


in actionwhich threaten to place any consi-
derable number of the people constantly out
of employ, in the ordinary ways and channels
of established industry ; neither the law, nor

systems of parochial management, nor the ar-


tificial patronage of individuals, will be able, by
their contrivances, to obviate the essential evil,
because they will not be able to create a real
demand for the spare labour. If that labour
could be profitably employed, the professed
27
tradesman would take it
up. If he cannot

gain by it, the artificial tradesman, who has a


worse chance, and many disadvantages to con-
tend with, must lose by it; consequently it
will be a losing trade; that is, no trade, but a
fiction of charity.

In thiscountry there are two causes, as I


suppose, which do actually threaten to throw
a considerable number of hands constantly out
of employ, not perhaps always in the same
district, nor of the same technical description ;

but still to leave in some part or other of our

system great stock of unapplied labour.


a
These causes are, first, the Poor Laws them-
and next, the fluctuating nature of our
selves;

Manufacturing and Commercial Industry. Of


the two, the latter, the fluctuating nature of our

manufacturing and commercial industry, seems


to have taken the lead in creating the present
accumulated difficulty in a surplus of unap-
plied labour, as far as the operation of the two
causes can be estimated apart but the incon-
;

venience so created, to have been greatly ag-


gravated, by the simultaneous influence of
those laws. Their proportion of influence
however in producing the evil, needs not to
be made a question, if it be granted that
both the one and the other contribute their
share to the same effect. But there is this
28
difference to be observed, that the consequence
of an accumulation of unapplied labour, as re-
sulting from the laws, may be met and re-
strained by all that counteracting change which
it
may be thought proper to introduce into the
laws themselves. But the consequence, as re-
sulting from the very nature of our manufac-
turing and commercial industry, cannot be
regulated ; inasmuch as it would be flatly im-
possible to separate the consequence from the
system, and prudentially impossible to retract
that system, or even perhaps to reduce it.
That these two causes separately and joint-
ly do in fact tend to burthen the country with
a number of supernumerary hands, scarcely
needs a solemn shew of proof. The Poor
Laws accelerate the growth of the popula-
tion by a premature increase, inasmuch as
they enter into an engagement beforehand to
provide for all, though neither the mode, nor
the station, of employment for all, is either fore-
sen or provided, nor any solid security taken
from principles of general calculation, that the
room for employing them will exist, or if it
exist anywhere, that it shall be accessible just
as it shall be wanted. The undertaking of the
law is carte blanche to the population.
upon a
The provision of the employment is deferred
to a subsequent and most precarious arrange-
29
ment, which hitherto has proved absolutely
fallacious. No adequate occupation has been
found for those whom the law has undertaken
to support. generates an evil which it
It

vainly attempts to remedy by a tardy and sub-


sequent application. It creates the labourers.

It cannot, as I shall attempt presently to ex-


plain, create the employment for them. It

has to go begging itself, to find methods of ful-


filling its own obligations.
The our manufacturing and com-
effect of

mercial industry to the same inconvenience is

apparent. These two branches of our national


system are engaged in the production, or the
circulation, of commodities of an unequal de-
mand and a shifting market. Besides causes
within the country, which may vary the activity
of them, they are open to the fluctuations which

may be induced by changes in the condition,


the wants, or the tastes of all that circuit of
the world abroad, with which they have any

point of connexion. War and peace alter-


nately supplant many of the foundations upon
which they rest, and other minor agents come
in among them to their sensible disturbance. In
this unsteady system, supposing the whole ef-
fective demand upon our labour of manufacture
or of circulation* to remain a constant quan-
30
tity, it is not always for the same commodities,
nor in the same channel, that the vent offers
itself. There may be an increase in the whole
effective demand, and yet many hands may be
thrown out of work; because manufacturers
of a given description may work more but still;

if there be a remission of the demand in any


single department of industry, there, in that de-
partment, the exclusion from labour will take
place; and the whole sum of activity will be
maintained, not by an equable partition of the
labour, but by a partial increase of it in one
kind, and a depression of it in another. The
stimulus of a thriving trade in one branch will
make that quarter swarm ;
and when it is de-

pressed, its
superabundant labourers will not
be taken off by the alternation of success in
another, but the thriving line will rear and at-
tract labourers of its own. The supernumerary
hands will remain such, and will be thrown
therefore for a time upon their own economy,
or upon the Poor Laws, which discharge them
from that economy. If an instantaneous trans-
fer of residence, as well as of manual habits,

were practicable, the shock of these fluctua-


tions would be less felt than it is. But both
the one and the other are impossible to any

great extent. The mechanics especially, and


31
artisans of an improved country, are not so
many units, but compose so many classes, which
are not readily interchangeable in kind,
any
more than they can easily migrate to the new
momentary home which a prosperous local
trade at a distance might chance to offer them.
It follows, that these
disengaged men become so
much burthen upon the other members of the

community, and press heavily upon the moving


wheels, which they cannot help to turn them-
selves. A caste of
unemployed poor is en-
gendered, and spread far and wide the Poor ;

Laws directly encouraging the increase of it by


the promise of a maintenance, scanty as it may
be; and disseminating the indigent race through
the.country, to their several parishes, in quest of
that maintenance. The produce of the labour
of those who are in work is consumed by those
who have neither work nor revenue ; and the
most industrious country suffers ina large

body of its members many of the evils of a

country the most slothful and the most unim-


proved.
From these sources then we must
expect a
continued, and a numerous succession of unem-
ployed hands; numerous in proportion to the
extended efficacy of the Poor Laws, combined
with the occasional height and prosperity of
32
our whole productive commerce, or of some
of its divisions; a prosperity which ebbs from
time to time as far back as its tide had risen.

Ispeak of the extended efficacy of the laws as


we now see and feel it. They have been long
acting to produce the harm to which the spirit
of them gives the virtual tendency. They
have been adopted by the people and that ;

adoption of them has brought out their theo-


retic mischief in its force. A
cumbrous dis-
eased excrescence has formed itself upon the
healthier part of the public body, fettering its
functions and eating out its strength.
But it never was the original aim and design
of the law, that so many able hands should re-
ceive any part of their maintenance from the
public alms. To set them to work is the let-
ter of the law. And upon the possibility of
finding them in work ought to depend, as I
have already observed, a great practical con-
clusion in the revision of this part of the law.
In the attempt then to take care of these un-
employed men by finding them a supply of
work, I am
persuaded that it is possible to do
much to abate the burthen of their support, but
totally impossible to furnishthem with pro-
ductive employment, whereby they shall be
able to support themselves, or add any thing
33
to the public wealth. Their labour may be
turned to use, but not to profit. They may
spend out of the general stock by being
less

set to do something. But they must be spend-

ing out of it to a certain loss, and form an


item of debt, it may be a heavy one, to the
public account. The first part of this proposi-
tion, that it is
possible to furnish them with
employment to a certain extent in diminution
of the expence of their maintenance, is not like-

ly to be controverted by anyone. The law wants


The " that
only to be better executed. second,
" it is
impossible to furnish them with produc-
" tive employment," I should venture to rest

upon simple principle; that the activity,


this

vigilance, and sagacity of private interest in


the way of regular trade, would always be able
to take up any business, and make it
prosper,
sooner than the unskilful attempts of any body
of overseers, commissioners, philanthropists,
or legislators. This appears to me a principle
almost self-evident: and the consequence from
it must be, that a
general system of parochial
manufacture of any kind with a view to profit,
or with a hope of making such establishments
maintain themselves, is a chimaera, a castle in
the air, which only the architects of a most

visionary policy will ever think of building. I

D
34
have systems of parish labour cannot
said, that
even be expected to make good their own ex-
pences. A
very ,short computation may shew
us, that on the side of the parish concern, the

outgoings, with the necessary allowance to be


made for mismanagement, will exceed, on the
side of the professed trader, his outgoings and
very high profits together: that is, whatever
profits can be made by him must be more
than covered by the disadvantages of parochial

management; and if none can be made by him,


the relative loss will cut so much the deeper
into the parish finances.
If it be alledged, that the parish could afford
to let out its labour at a cheaper rate than
others could do, and might so have the ad-

vantage of the market for that labour; no


doubt it is
by the application of parish
possible
labour to break down some private dealers :

but then the command of the market so ob-


tained would be producing harm to the right
and the left and though the parish might be
;

dealing more largely, the impossibility of mak-


ing a profit, and keeping within its expences,
would stand just as before.

We are driven to the inference, then, that no


real supply of productive employment can be
furnished by legal arrangement, when the trade
of the country itself fails to furnish it.
35
The
question may be taken up again from a
consideration of the whole, amount of means
in the country applicable to the
encourage-
ment of labour; and the conclusion we should
arrive at in that way would not be materially
different. Let any amount of capital be sup-

posed, or capital and revenue together as form-


ing the present means of the country. Now it
is not strictly true that this money will cer-

tainly be laid out, in the present year suppose,


to the last shilling in the encouragement of

labour.Parsimony and other causes may with-


hold a part of it from that use; though, to
take more exactly, the parsimony of one
it

year makes the profusion of another, and in


the average it comes nearly to the same point
as an equable expenditure. As to the accumu-
lations of a fair economy, they are all to the

public benefit, even if the individual had no


indisputable right to make them. But I shall
allow that there may be funds which the Poor
Laws might possibly touch, over and above the
expenditure which the private owner might
have chosen to make. Again, it is not true, that
the undirected application of that money at
the free choice of the individual, either in the

way of spending or of trading, would be the


same thing to a country, as when there is a
D 2
36

part of it
by law under a special appro-
laid

priation; because mere circulation differs from


distribution. With
a given quantity of water
to irrigate a meadow, it is possible, by the
choice and position of the sluices, to turn the
flow of the water upon a given spot which
most wants it. In like manner it is possible,
that the managers of the parochial taxes might

carry for a time a supply of money to a lan-


guishing trade, and lay hold of an opportunity
to spend more judiciously for the promotion of
labour than the original proprietors would
have done. But
imagine that there could
to
be a continuance of this superior wisdom of
distribution in the parochialmanagement, and
found a national measure upon that assump-
tion, is against all reason in a country where
trade is well understood. Trading capital, when
once it is created, and demand of labour, attract

one another the straight course of things


in

with invariable certainty. In a rich country,


when work is wanted be done, money is
to

soon found to set that work agoing, and in a

spending country all the


wanted, work is

which there is the power of paying for. In


our own country, which is both the one and
the other, rich in possession and spending
by habit, there is an activity and an enter-
37
prise in the investment of capital in traffick,
which, not at the
long run, but after a very
short race of competition, must soon leave be-
hind the awkward movements of a parochial
committee. Consequently I infer, that the
sums transferred to the parochial fund by law
for the encouragement of labour, will soon be

applied to less advantage for that given pur-


pose, than they would have been under the free
discretion of the proprietor or trader. In short,
it seems to me that a full expenditure on the
one hand, and trading funds of the promptest
circulation on the other, fairly divide between

them, and exhaust, in a general view, all the


substantial encouragement which labour can
expect to draw from our whole stock of pecu-
niary means. If it were necessary to trace this
view of the question still more closely, it
should be observed, that the poor rates must
be raised and expended within the lines of
parochial demarcation; without
which confine-
ment of them, there could not be a hope of
any competent controul, cognizance, or proper
disbursement of them. They make no transit
from parish to parish ;
and under this limitation,

the chance is
greatly lessened of making any
profitable use of them. The supply of labour
may be in one place ;
the chance of turning
D 3
38
that labour to profit, or the want of capital,

may be in another; and so on. The power of


accommodating and making opportunities meet
is next to nothing.
After all, in order to render the levy by poor
rates available to the farther profitable encou-

ragement of labour, it would be necessary that


the supposed remaining balance of our wealth,
the reserve of means which is unduly kept out
of circulation, should be drawn forth by a
special direction of the levy to those precise
hoards which would otherwise escape unfairly.
The inquisition of the rates should detect it in
the privacy of its retreat, and drag it, and no-

thing else but it, into the course of useful traffick.


But how are the rates levied ? and how do
they apply in respect of any such purpose ? They
are levied upon the holders of a certain deno-
mination of property indiscriminately; they
fall at a venture, without
any selection of
what is idle or active; they draw upon the
stock in the mass, and not, as they ought to do
for such a purpose, upon the lurking and fugi-
tive portions of it, which are attempting to
elude the general conscription of commerce.
If therefore it could be demonstrated to a cer-

tainty, that there are balances behind, over and


above the common run of expenditure, balances
39
applicable to the fructifying uses of public in-
dustry; yet, unless there was an equal cer-
tainty that the law would lay its hand upon
those superfluous means, and no others, the

theory of augmenting the patronage of labour


by poor rates is
only fallacious. To make good
such a theory, it would require far better eyes
than the law ever can have, and more discretion-

ary power than it ever ought to have, in the


pursuit of its revenue. What takes place in
any single parish in the kingdom is enough to
set this matter in its true light. The rates are
levied, not upon those who spend less than

they ought to spend, but upon many who


would be too glad to have the spending of
their money in their own way, upon their own
wants and uses, according to their station in
life.

If then be granted, that it is impracticable


it

to provide full and adequate employment for

any considerable number of our people, when


the spontaneous wants of the country fail to
do it the remaining consideration will be, how
;

to dispose of such superabundant labourers in


the best way, and with the least loss to the

public, which is bound to support them.


I have assumed along, that there is an ex-
all

isting legal obligation upon


the parish to main-
D 4
40
tain persons who are thrown out of regular work.

Such is the construction of the clause in the Act


of Elizabeth, now received and acted upon. And
supposing the construction to be an erroneous
one, still it has grown up into strength, and could
not be reversed, on the sudden, without great
disorder and private distress. That preparations
should be made
change the practice, is a
to

wish closely connected with the opinion I have


already expressed, of the impossibility of creat-
ing a supply of work at a call. If the hope of
such an improvement is to be shut out of

sight,the right management of this difficult

charge of these men becomes of the greater


consequence. And if the hope is ever to be
realized, still the management of them in the

mean time a present question.


is

All persons seem to be agreed, that a more


exact and systematic administration of this

part of the law ought to be enforced, by

making labour and relief go together, instead


of prostituting the public alms to the support
of dependent idleness, with its family of vices.
If then such an improved administration of
the law is to be introduced, one necessary step
towards that end will be to vest the execu-
tion of it in the hands of persons competent
to pursue such an object. The persons who
41

now hold it, are, generally speaking, with-


out the character and qualification it requires.

They are infinitely beneath their duties. It


isa vast interest between the public and the

poor, which is to be managed and in the ;

post of management, in the executive of the


system, are placed by the name of overseers,
or guardians, persons who neither have, nor
can be expected to have, the industry, or
the intelligence, or the independence of mind,

necessary for it. It is no discredit to these in-


dividuals, that their duties are above their
talents : their duties are imposed, and their
capacity of business is as respectable as their
condition in life can make it. But there are
real differences in the fitness of men for par-
ticular duties,which, without implying either
personal praise or blame, involve in them
a great deal of the public interest. Application

in a burthensome gratuitous office, is not to


be had, except with some high feeling and
spirittowards the public good; which must
be sought, if it can be found at all, in the
better ranks. The same may be said of the

intelligence required for any service not strictly


reducible to a routine of method, as well as of

independence of character they both improve


:

in proportion as one looks higher up in society.


42
As things now are, the overseer handles his
difficult business not worse than
might be ex-
pected ; sometimes yielding with a mistaken
facility to importunate and clamorous de-

mands sometimes exasperating with an un-


;

due severity of repulse and refusal ; often act-


ing and judging amiss; and rarely giving to his
decisions the impression of any authority or

respect. Perhaps nothing is under a worse or-


der both of government and finance, than the
affairs of the parish revenue in many places

oppressed with poor. One of the faults of the

misgovernment at present, as the details of


every Quarter Sessions may shew, is in theliti-
giousness of it. The discords, as well as the
trouble and expence of these disputes, are a sore
nuisance. The intricacy of the laws themselves

may be in part the cause: but ordinary minds

chiefly are the most infected with the misap-


prehension, the obstinacy, and the chicane,
which lead to much of this excessive litigation.
It would be highly desirable therefore to
draw into these offices a superior description of
men. The qualification now is, that they
must be substantial householders. They ought
to be gentlemen, where such could be had,
and could be prevailed upon, of some weight
of character. Perhaps an enactment to raise
43
the qualification of persons eligible to the of-
fice of overseer or
guardian of the poor, reck-
oned either by property, or by contribution to
the rates, would keep the option in a better
class, where such a description of persons ex-
isted. The benefit however would be
infinitely
greater, if they would address themselves to this
kind of duty of their own accord, upon a sound

apprehension of the decisive service they would


have the power of rendering.
But these superior men must be in the
executive of the parish. It will not be enough,
if they act as a committee of occasional re-

vision and controul upon the overseer. The


controul of a subordinate office is
always
invidious, unskilful, and difficult. The best

intelligence and the highest character are


wanted to be in contact with the detail of the
business. The term of management should
neither be annual nor long. An intermediate
term of three, or four years, would create expe-
rience,and prevent the trouble, or the trust,
from centering too much in the same hands.
It ought unquestionably to be gratuitous. I

mean that all the directing and managing offi-

cial duties, as of deciding upon cases of appli-


cation for apportioning the amount
relief,

of it, and levying the rates, should be in the


44
hands of men who can afford to do so much
for the public. Stipendiary overseers could not
be qualified as they ought to be. If they are
persons invited to the office by the emolu-
ments of it, they must be of an inferior condi-
tion in society. And these emoluments them-
selves are not unlikely to put a wrong bias upon
the appointment.
The management of such a public interest in
behalf of the poor as well as of the parish, is

really an object not unworthy the most liberal

feelings of the upper orders. It is a kind of ma-


gistracy, and it would estimation by a
rise in

few examples. In towns the trouble of it, by

being divided, might be reduced within com-


pass. That condition of life however which
enables men to live at their ease, by no means
disposes them towards voluntary laborious du-

ty: and if there be no sufficient motive for the


sacrificeof their ease, they do well to stand upon
the privilege of their fortune. It strikes me,

however, that the ultimate execution of the Poor


Laws in detail has much to do with the whole
of our internal national economy that it is :

not merely the disbursement and disposition


of so much of the revenue of the country ; but
a very considerable force, acting upon the
morals, industry, domestic manners, and gene-
45
ral condition of our people, that is to be regu-
lated : and if this be at all true, there are
few who can think the importance of the
trust insufficient to reach them. If again
the Poor Law s r

making those fearful pro-


are

gressive inroads upon the property of land-


holders and gentry, the call to look into the

dilapidation of their estates pretty loud up- is

on them. Instead of pretending however to


dictate for the conduct of other men, I would
submit to their attention some such queries
as the following : Whether the several classes
of subjects in a free country do not owe
their services to it in their appropriate cha-

racter ? Whether when gentlemen contribute

by their purse or their expenditure to the


public service, they do not reckon merely
as so many agents for the circulation of pro-

perty ? whether they have not other means in


their hands ? and whether therefore it be not
a privilege of duty especially theirs, to lend
their weight, character, and judgment, to sta-

tions of trust, where such advantages would


have room to act ?

As to the interest and benefit of the poor in

such an arrangement, it is certain that their

affairs, when they any interference by


require
authority at all, are never in such good care, as
46
when their superiors are induced to take an
activeand gratuitous part in them. The dis-
pensation of good from the enlightened mind,
the cultivated feelings, and the independent

spirit of the higher ranks, in the way of dis-


interested service, is an invaluable part of the
constitution of our country in its magistracy,
and in some other instances of a less ostensible
nature. It wants only a few distinguished
examples to raise the name of Overseer of
the Poor to a with that of Magistrate.
level

If however this should prove a hopeless,


as I am aware it a very uncertain wish,
is

the failure of it would be one reason more


against the continuance of the Poor Laws on
their present footing. For when fit and com-
petent men cannot be had to apply enactments
made, it is the strongest of all reasons against
the enactments themselves. In every point of
view such an improvement in the strength and
efficiency of the acting officers, as I have de-
scribed, is wanted ;
and most of all for the for-

mation and execution of well-conceived plans


of employment. Such designs really need some
able heads to direct them. In the alternative,
however, between abler officers of manage-
ment, or a new law, I should be well satisfied
to see the law altered, and the gentry of the
47
country relieved from the trouble of it. Only,
on the other hand, if they persist in support-
ing the present system by their voice and opi-
nion, I think they might do something more
in its favour, and shew that it can be well
administered.
If we might proceed on the supposition of
the managers being the efficient men required,
to their personal judgment and experience
would properly be referred the local arrange-
ments practicable in each parish, or in a limited
union of parishes, for the supply of work and oc-
cupation to the able labourers out of employ.
No enactment could do more than simply di-
rect that no relief should be granted, except with
the condition of some work being done for it.

But the selection of thework, as to its kind, and


the details of planning it, must be left to the

parishes within themselves. No general en-


actment could be made either for workhouses,
or against them certainly not for them ; be-
:

cause the circumstances of town and country


make a total difference in the expediency of
such a contrivance as a workhouse. In the
country can hardly be any thing more than
it

an asylum of relief. In towns it may be made


subservient to occupation. But to set up a
workhouse even in towns, is to establish, at a
48

heavy present expence, a very hazardous sys-


tem.
In populous towns a workhouse has this
chief recommendation of it, that among its in-
mates some variety and assortment of work may
be carved out for the use of the establishment
itself. Itmay be made in part its own con-
sumer. The mechanics of different trades may
work for each other; and so far supply mu-
tually their wants. Or, if some one simple
article of manufacture should be preferred
for all the hands indifferently, still it is more

likely that the government of the house will


be kept up, and the inspection of it attended
to, in a large town, than elsewhere. But the
management of a workhouse is a problem
of much greater difficulty, than persons seem
generally to be aware of,when they set any
high expectations upon it. They think that
regulation can do every thing, forgetting who
are the subjects that come under the regula-
tion. In a workhouse they will include ob-
viously the most idle, the most disorderly, and
the worst workmen in their several trades, of
the whole community: as the worst workmen
are the first to be discharged in a fall of
trade; and the workhouse certainly will not
improve them. Upon this mass of untoward
49
materials how is
any discipline to act ?
By a
continued struggle, by a close and scrupulous
inspection, it may keep down the habits of its
subjects ; but, without a kind of coercion
which should think not to be compatible
I

with the nature of the institution, it cannot


reform them. The industry, and consequently
the general morals, of such an establishment,
must be at a low standard: the better in-
mates must sink by the society of the worse :

the family virtues, which can thrive only in


the privacy of a separate home, must be nearly

extinguished among them. Regulation, if peo-


ple would consider the matter soberly, is really
a very impotent thing, where it has every
thing to do; that is, where it has no natural
motive in the subjects of it to sustain its
pro-
visions and purposes. And what poor man or

family can be expected to feel for the welfare


of his workhouse ? Its discipline, on the other
hand, cannot be mended by rigour. It is not

a place of penal coercion. It must be con-

ducted therefore on other principles than those


of a hulk or a prison. I know not whether it

would be practicable to make the comforts


and subsistence of the inmates bear a propor-
tion to the labour they might choose to exert,

and to supply in that manner a spirit of indus-


50

try and good conduct among them. If such a


disposition of things could be made, it might
deserve the trial.

One most serious and radical objection to the

establishment of a workhouse, which deserves


to be well considered in places where they
have not yet decided upon the measure, is,
that drags into the lowest state of bondage
it

and degradation many who might otherwise


have retrieved themselves from the less un-
seemly stains of parish dependence. It is the
rendezvous of dreadful invitation to struggling
fortunes and to rally back again from it is no
;

easy matter. I know that many persons con-

sider the terror of a workhouse to be a salu-

tary check upon the poor; and are not unwill-


ing to press the alternative upon them of re-
ceiving their subsistence in such an asylum, or
of receiving nothing. The degradation of the
workhouse deter the approach to it.
is to

The hardship of it is to be the security they


would keep in hand against importunate claims.
There a certain policy, no doubt, in this vir-
is

tual correction of the wide and excessive en-

gagement of the law to take care of every


body. And whoever considers the growth of
heavy demands upon the parish to be wholly
independent of the constitution of the law,
51

and believes it is to be ascribed solely to the


misconduct, or the misfortune, of the applicants
themselves, neither originating in the public
system, nor encouraged by it, he may vindi-
cate the policy on grounds of justice, as well
as expediency. But another, who thinks that )

the public system itself is in some measure a


source of the evil that is to be subsequently
checked by such intimidation, must consider
the law as visiting its own mistake upon those
whom it has misled, when it first makes a
promise of relief, and then tenders the relief
in such a form as may forbid the acceptance of
it.
Believing as I do, that the Poor Laws
themselves (in their practice however much
more than by their original enactment) have
actually favoured the growth of pauperism,
that they have loosened the motives of fru-

gality, sober labour, and personal


exertion in
the country, I derive no satisfaction from the

sight of these equivocal establishments intend-


ed to play off a double meaning, of invitation
and repulse, of protection and abandonment ;

but would much rather see the laws gradually


retract the erroneous principle upon which

they have proceeded, than pretend to make it

good in so exceptionable a manner.


As long however as the present system in

E 2
.52
its main branches remains in force, work-
houses will exist and their good or bad ma-
;

nagement, according to their capacity of a


good management, will be of great importance.
The project of them was received at first, I be-
lieve,with the hope of a great saving in the

parish expenditure by means of them. I do


not profess to say whether this was a sound
calculation or not; because, though the entire
maintenance of a given number of persons,
living in society, must clearly be more econo-
mical in the necessary cost, for mere diet, than
it can be when
they are to draw the same sub-
sistence to their separate homes ; yet the ex-
pences of buildings, ground-rent, salaries to of-
ficers, waste, and other incidents, puzzle the ac-

count farther than I will venture to follow it.

Add which, that every charge once fastened


to

upon a workhouse is hardly to be shaken off. It


is, as they say, a place for life; and few wind

their way out of it, except when they have been


forced there by some extraordinary season of na-
tional distress. The most general history of it

isone of constant inhabitancy whereas an out-


:

door patient of the parish is often assisted as


much he wants by occasional relief; and is
as
sometimes discharged off the list. But setting
aside the calculation of comparative economy,
53
which is a previous question before a work-
house should be set up ; when it is once set

up, the financial concerns of it are those which


are the most capable of a clear and satisfactory

management. It is the accessible point in the


system. Application on the part of the ma-
nagers, open eyes, and a few Arabic figures do
the business. Even in this department, easy
and simple as it is, much, if I mistake not, re-
mains to be done, under an improved manage-
ment ;not by invidious interference, nor upon
factious professions of reform; but by the

steady determination of men of leading and


authority in a town, to take their proper share
in the duties of parochial affairs. Many mis-
takes and abuses -would vanish before them;
abuses which spring up, not from any want of

personal honesty, but the mere defect of intel-


ligence, or of courage, or the proper habits
of

government and controul, in those who have


had the charge of thrown upon them. But
it

infinitely greater would be the benefit to the


workhouse from such an amended administra-
tion of it more difficult province in its
in its ;

police, manners, and general economy. These


are greater objects in themselves. They require
some sense and intelligence to conceive how
they may be promoted. They require still

E 3
54
more weight of character to uphold the provi-
sions made for them. In short, I think that
from the walls of a workhouse the very strong-
est attack is to be made upon the gentlemen

of England, to reduce them to a surrender of


some part of their time and thought to the
parochial service; that the post bears point
blanc upon them and that the fire from it
;

ought not to cease, till they have consented to


come and take it into their own charge, and
skreened themselves from its aim by getting
within the walls. They pay largely to the gar-
rison, but it will never be in good order till they
take the command of it. They have not spared
themselves in promoting the interests of the
lower classes in other instances of a very exten-
sive concern. By an almost unanimous effort,

they are now giving education to the infant


youth of their country. The public benevolence
would not be they would take up the
less, if

cause of arbitration between the wants of the

poor and their vices, in the administration of le-

gal charity. The nature of the duty, in some of


its aspects, is
perhaps not very inviting. It is not
allpure pleasure, to give a weekly or monthly
attendance in the reiterated details of an irk-
some examination of cases; to be molested by
the insult of prodigal indigence, or afflicted
55
with the nearer view of the irresistible distresses

of life in broken families, desolate old age, and


remediless suffering. These are things to pall
the delicacy of an indolent, fastidious, hesitating
virtue. They are strong in themselves; and
some of the accidents and exterior circum-
stances of appearance under which they are

presented to the notice, would be enough to


make the idler in practical benevolence turn

away from the company he had fallen into by


his over-zealous pretensions of service.
They
would the patience of even firmer
exercise

characters, wrought to the cast of a more use-


ful temper, and ready to take the good and
the bad together in their intercourse with life
and its concerns. But there be any solid force
if

in what I have attempted to shew, that there

isa real opportunity for men of a certain cha-


racter to restrain much of the obnoxious matter
that gathers about these laws when they come
to be applied, and to obviate many of the ill re-
sults of them \ and that no others can do this
so well as themselves, or rather, that none but
themselves can do it ; their aversion from the
personal trouble, or the distaste, of the occupa-
tion, will surely be overmatched by the stronger

challenge and provocation of a manlier feeling


and principle; and like the prince in the old
E 4
56
which history, if they choose, they
history,
may make a modern one, they will strip off
theirmantle for a while, to help the public
wheels out of the mud where they have lodged.
Most desirable of all would it be, that these
exertions should be engaged with the pro-

spect of a speedy termination of them that ;

it should be an extra force,


opposed to the con-
sequences of the past system only in the
interval which the law might think proper
to interpose before its own authoritative cor-
rection of them. But whatever may be de-
cided, as to the principle of the law, the opera-
tion of it, for good or for evil, as long as
itremains, will depend, in no small degree,
upon a closer and wiser attention to it, on the
part of those persons whose property and public
ease and interest are as much connected with

it, as I have endeavoured to make them think


their obligation of duty is.

To
take leave of this subject of workhouses,
I would beg to suggest, whether it might not
be of some advantage to their good order, if an
inspection of them at stated times, suppose
twice or four times a year, were directed to be
held by a committee of magistrates, and one
annual report made by them, of their internal
condition, with the particulars of the number of
inhabitant poor, course of work, amount of ex-
pence, accompanied with such general observa-
tions, as might mark their sense of the correct
or faulty state of management and
; this report

to be presented at the Quarter Sessions, with a

copy of it to be sent to the Home Department


of State, or the Privy Council. By which means,

among other advantages of the practice, there


would be a set of important data of information

on the state of the poor maintained in these

houses throughout the kingdom, continually in


the hands of the chief civil government; with
an index of the increase or diminution of them ;

and some connected correspondence of observa-


tion upon these establishments, through the se-
veral public authorities of the state.
To pass from the town to the country. In
the country, by a very general usage, more

prevalent however in the southern and mid-


land counties, I believe, than in the northern

parts of England, but certainly of a very wide


spread, labour and mendicity are so mixt to-
gether, that it would not be easy to separate
them, and set them clear of each other, by any
regulation short of the introduction of an

entirely new principle of practice in the law.


The strange discordant combination of wages,
and a general supplement to wages, by charity,
58
is the phenomenon of our rural economy,
as the Poor Laws have shaped it. Things
absurd in the reason, are not however always

equally hurtful in the practice. Whether in


this inconsistency of wages and alms blended

together, the effect is not quite on a par with


the reason of the usage, it may require perhaps
an abler judgment to determine; but there
are mischiefs, and those pressing and opera-

tive, which have their root in the usage, and


which the most cursory observer of it
may
perceive. The labourer reckons half with his

master, and half with the overseer. Towards


his master he has neither the zeal nor the
attachment he ought to have to his natural
patron and friend and with his parish he
:

keeps up a dependence which has something


in it at once abject and insolent abject in the
;

real condition of it, insolent in his manner


of shewing it.
By this
dependence interposed,
the personal bond between the master and the
servant is loosened, though they are parties
made to draw closely together by the tie of
a common interest ; and the invisible corpora-
tion of the parish buys its
pensioner's ill-will,
or sullen and thankless contentment, with its

weekly offerings.
The utility of this system, when it is vindi^
59
cated at all, is often said to be in keeping

wages low, and keeping them equal. These


in themselves are no certain benefits; rather
the reverse but they ought to be of the most
:

extraordinary value to the agricultural interest,


to compensate for the disorder they bring
along with them. Wages however are not
kept low, as far as they are made up by the
poor rates. It is only drawing the payment of
them from the purse of B, who has no work
done, instead of from that of A, who has the
work done. The community pays what the
master does not. If it be said, that the master,
whether farmer or other, is enabled to send the
commodity to market so much the cheaper, in
consequence of his labourers being paid in
part out of the pocket of his neighbours ; this
cheapness has clearly been paid for, by some
person or other, in the amount of the rates the ;

full cost of the


commodity has been accounted
for in the parish books; and the consumer
either the person
is who has paid so much
in advance for it, or it is the dealer himself,
or it is some third person, who has far less
right than either of the two to do it. The
rates therefore either take from the buyer, or

the and of course can cheapen nothing


seller,

between them; or if they take from a third


60

person, who has no concern with the transac-


tion, it is the more preposterous to regulate
their market at the cost of an unconcerned

party but in either case, the great party, the


:

country, can gain nothing on the head of


cheapness.
be argued, that the whole cost of wages
If it

to the community for the labour of these men,


who are half labourers and half paupers, is

kept down by
the rigour of the overseer hold-

ing a closer hand with them than the master


would be able to do, if he had the whole of the
account to discharge; upon this forced reduc-
tion of the labourer's earnings where is the

gain to be reckoned? Stinted wages will be


met by stinted labour; work ill
paid will be
ill done; and there is
certainly no very strong
stimulus upon the labourer towards his em-
ployer's service, when he reflects that he draws
a portion of his subsistence from a quarter to
which he renders directly no work at all. The
account in country labour be-
real state of the

tween the farmer and his workman, when wages


and parish allowance are mixt together, is no
more than this that for so many days work
so much is paid by the master, and so much
added by the parish. But that the farmer
gains more by his men, than he would do if
61
he had the whole bargain with them, and paid
them better, is
quite another point. How
much is lost to the farmer and the country by
lowering the labourer's heart and spirit, and
unstringing the sinew of his working powers,
is an item not easy to be reduced to an arith-
metical account: but something consider-
it is

able; and calculators ought to be very strong


in their balances computed in money paid in
wages, and saved by the medium of the poor
rates, before they specify any sum which they
will set off as an equivalent for the diminution
of the great productive springs and principles
of human and rational industry.
The equality of wages (as the lownessof them)
is
merely nominal, if it cost so much inequality
of allowance from the poor rates to keep them
at their pretended standard. But if it be al-
ledged, that the current stipulated wages are the
real pay of the labourer, and that the relief issued

from the of wages,


rates is not given in part

nor with any reference to the man's labour, but

only to the necessities of his family then this is


;

the prodigious and preposterous attempt made

upon the whole system of the country affairs


that a person shall be maintained according to
his necessities ; but shall not work, contrive,
or provide according to his necessities ; instead
62
of it, he shall draw his maintenance out of the
labour of others : for labour of some kind ul-

timately supplies all the means of the country,


and in the transfer of them from hand to hand
they must either be earned, or received for no-
thing: and in this manner a vicious equality of
duty in labour is substituted, where a radical
difference of obligation exists for a man's own5

wants make his own obligation ; and all the


force supplied by that higher degree of obli-
gation is sacrificed to the country, and the
sense of it to the individual.
supersede To
the personal motive, is to throw away so much
force of labour and to equalize the compen-
;

sation, is to add a positive discouragement to it.

And after the equal standard is not secured.


all,

It is not secured even nominally. There is a


great difference, and always has been, in the
current reputed wages, both in districts com-

pared with one another, and within the same


district itself; a difference created either by
local practice, or the master's choice, or the
labourer's worth. The tampering attempt of
the law has succeeded only very partially as :

far as it has succeeded, it has done it with

these sensible disadvantages, injudiciously and

unfairly.
If this parochial system cannot stand on the
63

ground of a good national husbandry, still less


can it on the principles of a sound legislation,
directed to the care of the personal habits and
manners of the people and if the Poor Laws
:

have a tendency hostile to the public manners,


they act unhappily in that way, in which it
comes within the competence of human laws to
act with the greatest power. For the efficacy of
human laws may be cast perhaps nearly into
the following scale their direct power to in-
:

spire men with the love of probity, diligence,


sobriety, and contentment, by positive com-
mand, is small; their power to restrain the

opposite vices is far greater; their power to


discourage or hinder good habits of character,
by mistaken institutions, greatest of all: be^
cause here they act at an advantage ; and the
institution and the bad part of human nature

go together; whereas in the other cases, they


are opposed, and the enactment has to force its

way. This one consideration makes the error


of any intrinsic virtual immorality of laws of
the last importance; and yet it is the error
with which our Poor Laws are commonly
charged, and charged with such a confidence
of imputation, as usually expressed when
is

men are speaking of a fact to be lamented,


rather than discussed. I know of no sub-
64
stantial reply which can be made to that

charge. They discourage many of the best


habits of the people, of which their industry,
the most obviously affected, is only the first.

They may have been counteracted, they have


been counteracted, by the presence of other
more wholesome invigorating powers in the
compound of our national fortunes but their ;

tendency by themselves is to paralyse and


corrupt those whom they profess to protect.
There is
poison in the alms of their mistaken
charity.
This unfavourable spirit of these laws, in

many different respects, is so generally felt,

that I believe, if the question of their repeal


turned solely upon it, they would be put down

by the acclamation of all the thinking men in


the kingdom. I might therefore content my-

self with the concession, almost unrestricted,

of an almost unanimous agreement of opi-


nion, and pass on without enlarging upon this

particular topic. But as it is here that the most


forcible reasons for the amendment of the

existing practice lie, and as the weight of these


reasons is the most conclusive part of the
whole of the practical inquiry, according to

my own apprehension of it ;
I shall trace, very

briefly, some of the modes of that bad influence


65
which our Poor Laws in their practice throw
upon the manners of our population, without
the least hope of adding any thing to the forci-
ble exposure, which has been made of it by
others already.
The aspect of a fixed legal provision of
first

maintenance, in the contingency of want, inde-


pendent of personal character, or any other
pledge of antecedent economy, exertion, pru-
dence, or merit of any kind, is a most pressing
invitation to all who like bread better than la-
bour, and living at ease more than on the prac-
tice of self-denial, to remit much of their pains,

especially the pains of contrivance and fruga-


lity in the husbandry
of their affairs, to the
readier and irksome plan of living at the
less

cost of others on the wide open common of

parish subsistence. If they cannot resort to


it for all
they want, and make it their sole re-
venue at once ;
still to push the advantage of
their use of it ;
to think of it as a sure resource

against their heedlessness, indiscretion, and


mistakes; to play with their duties, which
they may discard at will, and be quite se-
rious and settled in their view upon the libe-
rality of the law, which cannot discard them,
seems to be a true picture of the fact and the
theory of our parochial constitution, as ad-
F
66
dressed to the feelings of our common people,
against their industry. Originally, indeed, it

was intended that the grant of relief should be

purchased by labour. But the providing a


place of work is a part of a man's own
duty*
At the best, therefore, the law undertook to
relieve him from one instance of his proper
duty, and so far did amiss. But the law has
failed grievously in the threat of
performing it
for him, in finding him the employ, and is

glad to do the best it can to keep its pro-


mise of finding him the subsistence. Upon
this ground of engagement he has
gained over
the severity of the law, and profited by its
kindness; and stands at present on a tenure of
very easy conditions, with a right to be as de-
pendent as his vices or idleness can make him.
If one might hint at differences of national

temper, such laws are more injurious to the


mere industry of an Englishman, than they
would be to the native of
many other countries.
He is more inclined of himself to efforts of work,
than to a continuous and sober assiduity in it;
he has more spirit than patience, and likes to
earn, better than to practise any good thrift
upon his earnings. His own way would be to
divide himself between working hard, spend-
ing fast, and living idle. In this ground of
67
character, the law makes the greater disturb-
ance : it
just hits the faulty part of the charac-
ter, and with the propensity of it.
strikes in

The foundation of all moral feeling and


moral conduct is in a responsibility, in a man's
own person, in the consequences of his con-
duct. A
sense and perception of this respon-

sibility is the
spring of the practical principles
of virtue. It enters into our highest duties.
The Poor Laws shake this foundation. They
tell man, he shall not be responsible for his
a
want of exertion, forethought, sobriety. They
deal with him, as if no such responsibility ex-
isted. By cancelling the natural penalties of
a great deal of his vice, they darken and per-

plex his own notions of the demerit of it.


One of the happiest appointments of life, is in
theexercise of the domestic duties, upon the prin-

ciple of a natural or a chosen affection. Out of


this fountain of kindly feeling, which flows from
the rock of nature, comes muchof man's hap-

piness, and much of his virtue, without which


indeed the happiness could not b6. Among
the poor especially, whose feelings and princi-

ples are more nurtured by the circumstances


of life in which they are cast, than they ever
can be by the artificial discipline of any culti-
vation, their home is the school of their senti-
F 2
68
ments, and their best enjoyment entwines it-
self round the care of their moral family obli-

gations. Tohave really the charge of his


family, as a husband and a father ; to have the
privilege of laying out his life upon their ser-
vice, and of seeing them exclusively on
rest

his protection, is the poor man's boast, in the


estimate of the mere relative conditions of life.

He himself is all the better for having so grave


a charge upon his hands. The wants of his
work; and no call sounds
family are his call to
more piercingly, nor more gratefully, to an un-
corrupted ear. There is music in it, with all
its sharpness. But the breath of the parochial
law tarnishes the colouring of this family pic-
ture of cheerful native virtue. It flings an-
other atmosphere upon it. By exonerating
him from the sole charge of his offspring, it
abrogates the father's proper character. It

makes him begin to think them an encum-


brance, from which he ought to be discharged.
It means, indeed, to do no more than take off
from him the load of their support; but it does
take off the pressure of much sacred obligation.
It makes him and them less intimately
pledged
to each other; less dear to each other. It

sows thistles among the flowers. And is he


.the happier for this substituted relief proffered
69
to him, almost imposed upon him, by a fixed
practice ?
Suppose he has yielded to the temp-
tations of convenience, so far as to accept it
its

without repugnance, he retains neither the


same claims upon the gratitude of his
solid

children for an undivided care of them nor ;

can they look up to his example with reve-


rence, nor feel the same force of filial piety,

expanding into a great motive of future reci-


procating duty. In the country especially, the

family ties have been nearly burst asunder by


the artificial adoption which the law has made
of the children. It has made parents, chil-

dren, and brothers hardly know themselves to


be such. The interposition for their neces-
sities has disbanded their affections.
Iadd, with a great respect for those who
seem to hold a contrary opinion, that the Poor
Laws are not favourable to virtuous marriage.
To bare formal marriages they are too favour-
able. To the promotion of the virtue of the mar-

riage union they are most adverse. The


virtue of

that union implies, I should think, a settled


and ascertained preference of affection, with so
much force in it on the side of the man, as to
make the maintenance of his wife and offspring
a part of his most positive calculations and in-
tentions. Perhaps this is begging the ques-
F3
70
tion at issue. But I know not how others
can reduce the character of the married state
to the solemnity of a formal union and domes-
tication. They intend, it is true, a great deal
more. They think the husband and father is
bound to that he can for the supply of
do all

that maintenance. But this very duty to do


all he can,abridged, discouraged, and super-
is

seded before-hand. He is not left to look


at the full extent of his obligations : -he has no
need to reflect upon them, nor pledge himself
to them : the indiscreet offers of the law mask
and disguise the very sight of them. Among
the lower classes, in their marriages, I should
think that the deliberate purpose and prospect
of taking common fortunes together, upon the
stock of their endeavours within themselves, is
a great part of a right affection, and the only
safe criterion of it: and when a hasty, incon-
siderate union, without regard to such a duty,
is said to be imprudent or indiscreet; the word

seems to me ill chosen


might be more
: it

properly called marriage without the appropri-


ate affection of it. If it be asked, why the
married poor not look to the parish relief,
may
as others do to their property or
independent
fortune; or why their virtue should be less, be-
cause they are to live upon that relief? For
71
the same reason that, although water is water,
there is a difference between drinking it from
a clear spring, or at a stagnant miry pool, fed
only with the oozing drainage of the adjoining
lands, and contaminated by the trampling of
the many clovenfooted beasts which have
been there before. >The necessities of the

poor plainly make their duties ;


then their du-
ties, as those of all other men, make their cha-

racter, their improvement, their enjoyment.


We cannot abolish their necessities. It is

equally vain to try to separate their character,


if it is to be good for any thing, from the

just apprehension and plain fulfilment of their

especial and personal part of duty in life.

The parochial dependent has himself but


little gratitude for the relief afforded him. It

might have been expected, that public alms


would be repaid with thankfulness at least but ;

the expectation, if not taken up on a false and


narrow view from the first, is certainly disap-

pointed in the fact. The most dissatisfied and


discontented may be seen among our parochial
poor. Whether it be, that the loss of the vi-

gour of honest exertion spoils the temper or ;

that the gross intemperance frequent among


them, eats out their sense of right and wrong,
as much as it
aggravates their wants ;
or that
F 4
72
the captiousness of disputing upon an indefi-
nite claim makes every thing seem too little
for them or that the practice of looking to
;

others for help must make a man restless in


himself, and throw him off from the centre of
his repose ;
or that alms, which were meant
to be medicine, and not food, vitiate the moral
habit, merely by being constant ;
or some
touch of these provocations together 5 we
all

certainly can see little of the spirit either of


thankfulness or contentment under the most
It must
profuse expenditure of legal charity.
be granted, at the same time, that the professed
attempt of the law is beyond its power. It
cannot in any way adequately maintain its

numerous petitioners. It has promised too


much ;
so that, besides the comparison which
indigence is
apt to make between its hopes and
its receipts, unreasonable enough in itself, there
is the complaint produced by the half- mea-
sured performance of an indiscreet impossible

promise. The tranquillizing effect of sober


habits of labour, is so much of the peace and

good order of society. It is not the labouring


bull that begins to gore, and throw the meadow
into alarm; but the mere idle grazers, who, if

they have any bad blood in them, are stung to


violence by the first fly that molests them. It
73
would be well therefore, if every parish re-
tainer would be satisfied with being idle: but

he is likely to be as troublesome as he is idle,

and as mischievous as useless.


If such consequences of impaired content-

ment, sobriety, diligence, and strict moral


apprehension, are traced with any degree of
truth to the spirit of our parochial system,
we have cause to be thankful that other
principles among us have been able to hold
it in check as far asthey have done. The
influence of it however, when taken by itself,

constitutes proper character; and as far as


its

that character can be consulted, must decide


the wish to retain or reject it. The actual
progress of the harm, in contaminating the
hearts and habits of the people, is, 1 am per-

suaded, very far short of all that overflowing


measure of it which might have been let in
upon us, if it had not been powerfully resisted:
and if this persuasion be well founded, there is

the fairer hope of our being able to retrieve


ourselves, and make a successful turn, under
those better energies, when they shall be more
left to theirown action, and disengaged from the

counterpoise which has been hung upon them.


The harm not yet produced, shews they have
been strong at the bottom ; and it is therefore
74
a most substantial encouragement. The sound-
ness of the constitution has been tried by the

malignity of the poison which has not proved


mortal to it. For that a great degree of the
bad influence of this system has not yet made
its
way among our people, is, I think, most
apparent. We have examples among our
lower classes, of sobriety, diligence, good con-
duct, and patient contented labour ;
many
cheerful, thriving, independent working fami-
lies,though they have been pitched upon the
very edge of the precipice, which the law has cut
away under their feet : and every such exam-
ple is in derogation of the natural tendency of
the mistaken method in which they have been
treated. Perhaps the sketch of our history is
this ;
that a religious, free, active, and enter-

prising people, have a depth and solidity of re-


sources within them not easy to be exhausted.
Even the Poor Laws have not exhausted them.
For had we
not stood on some such ground of
more than ordinary strength had our people ;

not had a conscience, a spirit, and a staple of


honest feeling within them, to withhold them
from accepting with unchecked avidity the
corrupting overtures of eleemosynary mainte-
nance, and to qualify the partial and con-
strained acceptance of it to which they have
75

yielded; had they not had a sober religion


continually recalling them to their obvious
duties; and a breed of character naturalized
among them by the greater virtue and efficacy
of many of our other constitutional laws them-
selves; what is there in the nature of these

parochial laws, as they are now applied, which


could have saved us from the degeneracy and

degradation of having become one great na-


tional poorhouse, overrun with the infection
of a Spanish or a Neapolitan leprosy of mendi-

cancy ?

The evil however must be expected to be

progressive. It has entered deeply enough into


the habits of the people to propagate itself
there ; and the very difficulties which are be-

ginning to press in many places upon the sup-


ply of the parish revenue, the supply being
straightened by contributors passing into the
class of receivers, and the remaining contri*
butors being proportionably impoverished ;

these very difficulties make the prospect on


the side of our general resources, an affair

of some apprehension. It is
quite possible
for a very opulent country to be most se-

riously shaken and disturbed by obstructions


and embarrassments in the balance of a sum,
or the making up of a debt, which may be
76
absolutely insignificant in comparison of its
wjiole opulence. It makes a vast difference,

whereabouts in the sum of its public affairs that


difficulty of balance or debt may happen to

rest. If it affects the first sources of supply,

if it cramps and disorganizes the system of the


labour of the country, by converting labourers
into mere spenders and consumers; the real
detriment produced by it is infinitely greater
than it would be, if there was a defalcation
from its means to the same nominal extent in

any other part of system. The rentcharge


its

of seven or eight millions a year, which has


fallen upon the landed property of England,

for the poor, is not in the grievance: but


itself

that a moiety of it should be necessary for the


forced support of that class, from which an in-
crease of means, rather than an absorption of

them, should be expected. For it cannot be


unknown, that a very considerable portion of
this rentcharge has been expended, in relief to
the able labourer, in the prime of life, without

having its value replaced in work or produce of


any kind. Much of
has been given in pure
it

consumption for maintenance. This circum-


stance makes the worst onus of the debt, and
shews that it is a loss very different from its
mere amount. A nation could better afford
77
to owe its stockholders five times the amount.
It eats in fact like a canker at the root of our
resources. For the labour of the kingdom, with
myriads of working hands, is that fibrous root
its

which extracts for us the first elements of our


growth, and sap of circulation. If this root
of labour makes its
way, and can strike its
last fibres freely, the timber will thrive in its

strength of trunk, and pride of branch and


if it does not, the finest suns and
foliage j

rains over head will not be able to make the


plant grow. It is commonly said of the
palm-
tree, that no weight, laid upon its head, can
kill it. I have not heard whether naturalists
have made the other experiment upon that in-
destructible species, but I should suppose that a
much smaller force would be sufficient to do it

a serious mischief at the root.


The progress of embarrassment however,
which there is just cause to apprehend, if the

system out of which it


springs permitted to
is

take its own course, is not to be reckoned

exactly from year to year without intermission,


though perhaps in that simpler view also, the
gatherings of it may be visible, but rather
by the returns of seasons of public difficulty,
brought on by other causes, during which the
evil makes its push, and runs rank upon the
78
occasional distress of the country. Seasons of
leisure and security therefore are particularly

valuable for the beginnings of any prudent


measures, calculated to give another turn to the
obliquities of the past, before they are carried
farther away by a great movement at once,

under the crisisof any serious public emer-

gency occurring again. Nor does it often


happen, that any single mistake, or wrong cast
of policy in the internal affairs of a country, is

quite beyond the reach of redress, when once


the error itself is fully understood, and the de-
liberate view of followed up by syste-
it is

matic endeavours to obviate it provided those


;

endeavours carry a general concurrence of feel-


ing with them, and come recommended at the
first
by the steady countenance of an au-
thoritative wisdom in the national councils.
The good sense of a country, when rallied to
a point under a right direction, is a pledge

upon which one may opposed to circum-


rest,

stances in themselves the most unpromising.


But sufferance of the mistake, and passiveness
under it, whether owing to the want of a lei-
surely attention to it, or the failure of a strong
confederation of sentiment in attempting the

remedy of it, is to resign ourselves to it with


a kind of patience, which will by no means
79
make it more knient and merciful in its

turn.
At the same time, projects of amendment
have no right to be very sanguine in the
extent of their aims. For the particular in-
terests of the country, which are the
most nearly
affected by the constitution of our Poor Laws,
are by no means beholden to those laws for all
the injury or benefit of which they are ca-
pable. We must not suppose therefore, that,
if they were set as
completely at ease, as
the most satisfactory removal of all that is ob-

jectionable in these laws could set them, they


would immediately pass at once into a state of

extraordinary high order, vigour, and perfec-


tion, like so many smooth spheres, spinning on
their axes, in free space, along the national eclip-
tic.This is no more than a truism, resulting from
the complexity of all such affairs and I men- ;

tion not for others, but for myself; lest


it

I should be thought to exaggerate the impor-

tance of the subject of the Poor Laws, and con-


ceive that they contain in them more than

they do, and under that notion seem to be


making vast anticipations of the beneficial
effectsof any amendment of them, however
well conceived and applied. The order of
Providence has made no such disposition of our
80
affairs, as that either the welfare of them
should be wholly at our command, or that our
own part in
contributing to that welfare
should terminate in any single achievement of

public duty. When men measure their steps,


and follow the best light they have, in apply-
ing the soundest principles of reason, equity,
and morals to their public arrangements, they
are in the course prescribed to them. But
they will find something more to be done
on every new ground they acquire. Each
step of improvement is only a term in a series.
But there is this to encourage them, that in
the progress of the series, when it is steadily

pursued, the difficulties are the diminishing


quantities, the encreasing ones are benefits.

There are a few slight observations more


which I should wish to make, before I go
on to the more difficult task of attempting
to specify, what is the application to which
this general view of the subject may seem

to lead, if the view itself can furnish any

thing like the materials of a farther application


of it, in any way at all.
The first of these observations relates to the
law of Settlement. That law, as it now stands,
is found to be a source of endless
litigation ;
81
and itthe occasion of frequent removals of
is

harrassing hardship both upon the poor and the


parish to which they belong. common case A
is, that a petitioner for relief has to leave
the home where he has been established many
years, to break up his little fixtures of connexion,
and travel to the other side of the kingdom, to
thrust himself, after an absence which has
made a stranger of him, upon his legal settle-
ment. Unless the value of this hardship be in
frustrating the offer of the relief, it deserves a

remedy. The very cost of these removals, in-

cluding the expence of the law-suits they create,


would clothe and feed many who gain
in plenty

only wretchedness by them. The vagrancy


which they generate, and the vagrancy to which
they furnish the excuse, is another, and a most
serious objection to them. In some seasons

England scarcely has the face of a settled

country, its inhabitants are so scattered upon


their travels in every direction in quest of their
home. The returning influx upon some of the
agricultural parishes, by this law of unsettle-
ment, from the manufacturing districts, takes
them occasionally by surprise. After the draft
has been made by the manufacturing districts
from the country, the agricultural population
is still kept full in its own resident numbers,
r
8*2

and any return forced back upon it is over-


stocking it, by an order, beyond and against its
arrangements. In prudence, the check ought
to be put upon the influx into the manu-

facturing districts, by charging those districts


with the support of a population they have
adopted for their own uses. There is no
wrong policy in this, because there is no fear
of their trade being impeded for want of hands ;
but much fear of their increasing in numbers
too rapidly for a steady and permanent pros-

perity, as well as for their internal quiet and


good order. There is no hardship in it, but
such a degree of hardship as there ought to
be; viz. that of a check applied to the direct
seat of the inconvenience. If it be said, would
not the incumbrance be intolerable, by keep-

ing a dense population dependent for all its


parochial relief upon the impoverished re-
sources of its own district, in a season of great
commercial distress ? There may be a hard-
which calls for some remedy, but
ship in this
by no means the particular remedy of throw-
ing back the disbanded mechanics upon the
remote agricultural parishes. The commercial
quarter has the use and benefit of these men ;
and cannot be required that the country
it

should keep vacant places for them, against the


83
time when they may chance to become useless*
I am aware that something may be urged in
favour of a rapid supply of hands, to be ready to
come in whenever there is a quick demand of
them, and that a population always flowing in,
even to redundance, tends to keep manufactur-

ing wages low but the wiser, because the safer


;

practice, is, to favour the aggregation and con-


fluence of people to any given quarter, just so
far as there is the power of maintaining and
establishing them in their acquired homes.
When manufacturing numbers go beyond this
limit, they ought to bear the inconvenience of
itthemselves, for the same reason upon which
their mills and engines are obliged to eat up
their smoke, when it becomes troublesome.
On many accounts, therefore, it would be
a judicious alteration, to attach the right of
settlement more than it is now attached to in-

habitancy. The demolition of cottages in some


places, in order to evade the stroke of this regu-
lation, and the dismissal, in towns, of some
recent settlers, which might be expected to
ensue, if the regulation were to be retrospec-
tive, make it
expedient that it should be in
force for the future only, and follow the cases
of new inhabitancy unless it might be thought
;

better to apply the regulation generally at


G 2
84
once, leaving a power to individuals, if they

chose it, to redeem their removal, and establish


themselves in their present quarters, by an

engagement discharging the parish for them-


selves and families.
The objections to the present law of settle-
ment are the hardship, the expence, the liti-

gation, the vagrancy, the indiscreet and tumul-


tuous aggregation in manufacturing towns of
new comers from all by it.
quarters, produced
They point out a modification of it to be made,
which should reduce it to more simplicity, and
dispose it to more affinity with the natural

bearing of things that tenancy, occupation,


j

years of intercourse, and past employment,


should make a man's proper legal home; and
'that he should find his legal rights at home
with him.The same modification would
enable parishes to know better than they
now do the whole muster of their people. At
present they have parishioners, who may be-
come dependent upon them, they know not
where, nor how many of them, till their un-
welcome return revives a connexion, which
has subsisted, with a perverse constancy,
through distance of time and place, out of
all recollection.

I shall advert next to the plan of a Limita-


85
tion upon the amount of rates to be assessed
in future. This limitation, as it is a pledge of
some protection property now sub-
to the

jected to the maintenance of the poor against


the indefinite encroachment which otherwise
threatens it, is, in that light, certainly a bene-
fit : and supposing it were rigorously adhered
to, the very knowledge, among the parish ex-

pectants, that there was some limit to their


range of expectation, some barrier which they
could not pass, might incline them to turn their

thoughts homeward again to the care of them-


selves. But it is an arrangement, at the best, far

from being satisfactory. In the first place, there


is much reason to fear that such a limitation
would not eventually be maintained, after the

example of a similar one having failed before,


and considering that the urgency of the appli-
cants, as long as they retain the principle
of dependence upon the parish unqualified in
any one of its main articles, would probably
overbear a mere barrier of figures in the parish
account. Then there would be much real
difficulty in the proceedings, to be governed
by such a limiting rule. For the use of the
limitation would be chiefly, or solely, in cases
where there some
struggle between the
is

ordinary supplies of the parish rates, and the


G 3
86

exigencies of the poor, or a kind of run and


pressure upon the parish by a mass of indi-
gence ;
and in circumstances of this kind, it

would be hard to know how to distribute the

supplies under a fair proportion to the appli-


cants, known or expected hard to know how
;

much might be granted for the present, and


how much should be kept in reserve for the
remainder of the year's service. The real in-
tricacy in such a distribution of account would
shew itself in disproportions and inequalities
of allowance, impossible to be avoided; and
the applicants would have one pretext more
for discontent.
The limitation itself in many places would
be only in words and figures. It would be set,
I presume, by an average of certain preceding

years. But the average taken upon the preced-


ing years might be a sum exceeding in its real
value the highest amount of the assessments
of any of the averaged years, under the great

change which has taken place in the value of

money itself. A
given rate, or assessment,
nominally the same, or lower, might in this
way be a greater real money value than it was
some time before. In many of the most dis-
tressed districts, where the parochial rates have
nearly equalled the rents, a nominal average
87
would therefore be no effectual benefit; and
yet it is in those districts that the alleviation of
the burthen is the most wanted.
It is manifest also, that a peremptory restric-

tion of the whole amount of money applica-


ble to the parochial service, though abundant-
ly justified in many districts by their particu-

lar condition being so impoverished as to make


the measure, for them, almost a measure of

necessity, if nothing can be substituted for it;


and where the same extreme necessity does not
exist, still justified by the prudence of prevent-
ing in some way the interminable increase of
the parochial burthens; still, that such a re-
striction is an ill-adjusted measure in itself,

and would in many instances operate very in-

equitably. It would fall unfairly in some pa-


rishes, where the relative state of the poor and
the parish might render an increase of the relief
as justand reasonable, as it is possible for any
thing to be under the Poor Laws at all. It

would deny to many possible fair claimants the


whole, or a part, of that degree of relief com-
monly granted elsewhere to persons in their
condition, on this or that account of claim.

Leaving the reason of the present demands


wholly unimpeached, and unexplained; direct-
ing no distinct warning or remonstrance to the
parties, in the line of their affairs, by putting a
88
check to their expectations upon positive mat-
ters implicated in their conduct; which would

be speaking to them in a definite sense, and


a sense applicable to all this plan of limita-
:

tion would nurture the whole mass of the


claim in and deny the allowance of
its
origin,
it to thousands, on account of reasons pro-

perly affecting a distant quarter of which they


know nothing. The want of a clear method,
and of a good principle at the bottom of
it, in this direct compulsory restriction, ren-
ders it, I wholly unacceptable, unless
think,
it be the only possible plan that can be de-
vised for accomplishing the same end. If a

parish had to keep itsaccount with a single


dependent, the plan would be much more use-*
ful in that case. For the ascertained fact of
the total amount of his expectations might set

his mind at rest, and put him on a decided


course of providing for himself. But, in the
limitation proposed to be made, the ascertained
fact of a general amount only, not of each
is

man's share in it. Consequently, each man


has his indefinite expectations left to him, and
every separate specific ground of expectation
remaining as before.

I have now finished the outline of such con-

siderations as have occurred to me, in attempt-


89

ing to form some estimate of our existing


practice under these laws.
The outline, I am
sensible, is exceedingly incomplete in several

parts of the reasoning of it, and will require to


be assisted by much of the reader's own discern-
ment, in order to give the topics of it their pro-
per force, as well as his indulgence for the de-
fective illustration of them. But among persons
who are heartily intent upon the substance of
the subject itself, and who are examining it for
use, if there be any truth and soundness in
the notions have followed, they will be taken
I

with that kind of enlarged interpretation, which


looks to the essential reason of them, rather
than the imperfect manner in which they have
been represented.

In passing from the effects of the existing

system to the mode of amending it, every


considerate person must feel he is stepping

upon the ground of most serious difficulty.


He is
passing from experience to the applica-
tion of it. To make a report of results which
have explained themselves to our very senses,
is athing comparatively easy, and wholly
different from the forecast of the effect of un-
triedarrangements, which will have to meet
with interests and prejudices of a nice feel-
90

ing, and of much combination. Experience in-


deed must still be his guide: but no longer a
it is

guide who attends him close at hand, but one


who sends him forward under a general direc-
tion.

When however the seat of an evil is truly

ascertained in any case, and the results of the

past have been connected with the reasons of


them, those reasons themselves serve to point
out the better arrangement to which we must
endeavour to make our way, and reduce it to
this, that it must be formed more or less upon
the antagonist principles. In this manner, on
the subject of the Poor Laws, experience de-
monstrates, I think,two ways, for and against ;
for the principles which the past system, in
some of its branches, has violated, as much as

against the practice which has been found in


those branches of it to be injurious. But then
in the pursuit of the new advantage thus

brought to view, but by no means placed with-


in immediate reach, the practical hindrance in-

tervenes, that literally it is not possible to im-

pose a new plan and system upon human agents


and their affairs, all at once ; no, not under the
most perfect wisdom the present holdings
:

and interests stand so much in the way; and


they are there, whether we think of them, or
91
no ;
be sure to find our plans out,
.and will
when they come to be applied, if we have pre-
viously overlooked them. When therefore we
hear of novel and extensive schemes, founded

upon no ascertained principles of observation,


but setting out from an ideal point in the state
of society, and asking as liberally, in postu-
lates, from the common sense of men, as they

promise to repay in the public happiness they


are to produce, I begin to think that the au-
thors ofthem must have faculties of another
order and ken, which enable them to soar
at such an extraordinary rate, totally unin-
cumbered with any regard to the position and
fixture of the system which they profess to re-
place with a better, and unchecked in their
flight by the tedious tentative process of an ana-

lysed and corrected experience. They really


leave us, and our difficulties, behind them.
But on the other hand, to be wholly go-
verned by that difficulty which has been cre-
ated by the footing and possession of a pre-
sent arrangement, is to forego our own hopes,
and make a mistake, once committed, irretriev-
able. It is to take the discretion of other
men who lived before us, for the last rule
of our which they might understand
affairs,

very imperfectly and sometimes to set up


5

a party by no means so well deserving of


92
our confidence, as the discretion of any men,
but their heedlessness, and oversight, and the
ill-reasoned abuses of time, in lieu of all

our ownself-government. As to the circum-


stances of obstruction themselves, they may
or they may not be insuperable it is a question
;

of a prudent calculation, to be taken up with


a fair rational courage. They are always to
be consulted, and to be accommodated but :

a previous determined feeling to leave them as

they are, and with them their known inconve-


as nearly as possible, a
nience, is, stultifying of
our own reason, and a desertion of the con-
duct of our affairs, whether in public life or in

private.
After these preliminary remarks, I shall not
shrink from the hazard of stating, under some
few separate heads, what seems to offer itself
as the practical result issuing from the general
considerations which have been suggested.
And doing this, I shall follow the simple
in

and obvious division applied before, by con-


sidering the cases of the Disabled Poor, and
the Able Labourer, apart.
The fundamental principle of our Poor Law
was charity. And this principle
ought to be
preserved sacred and entire, in all cases where
nothing but charity can help the claimant, and
where nothing but unequivocal charity can be
93
fostered by a provision of the law in his favour.
Upon this ground, the wants of extreme and
hopeless debility in the decayed and worn-out
labourer, the wants of female decrepitude in
the destitution of singleness or widowhood,
and the wants of orphan infancy, should
remain, not only as fit and allowable, but as
most imperative claims upon the public hu-
manity of the country the legal support being
:

to be granted in all these cases, as it is at pre-

sent, only when there is no near relative of


sufficient ability to bear the charge of it on the
motive of a natural duty of kindred. This re-
striction however would apply only to a gra-
tuitous provision. If a subscription from the

poor themselves, in any degree, towards it,


should be introduced, the public would be

making a contract absolute with them for their


future maintenance, not to be so restricted.
No subscription can attach to the orphan case.
There are three ways in which this future
maintenance in old age might be secured to
them either gratuitously ; or upon the condi-
:

tion of a previous contribution ; or with a cer-


tain rate of gratuitous allowance, to be general,

leaving it to their choice individually to secure


to themselves, by a certain rate of contribution,
an increase of comfort and subsistence. This
last method, combining the other two, would
94

provide that something should be given, upon


pure compassion, to all ; and it would reward
the economy of those who might choose to
practice it, with a more liberal support.

Instead of thinking that the present expen-


diture, made in the relief of persons like these,
is carried too far, or that there is
any excess
in the usual grant of it, I should hail it as
one of the most satisfactory consequences of
a stricter frugality of the law, in all its other
branches, if out of that frugality a more effec-
tual maintenance could be secured to them. It

isonly the discharge of a debt to our common


nature, when its extreme and guiltless imbe-

cility,under destitution in old age, is made a


special object of care and there is much reason
:

why the law, if it is to attempt charity at all,


should exercise it on cases of want like these, ra-
ther than any others. For they are cases of a
continued and uniform indigence, and therefore

they are of a simple management they are ;

the most safe from the suspicion of abuse, and


therefore fit matter for a general enactment;
and they are the be adopted
least likely to

into the care of private benevolence, on ac-


count of the permanence of the distress in
them, a circumstance which commends them
so much the more to the protection of the law.
The humanity which it was designed, by the
95

original text of the main statute


upon this
subject, to infuse into the law of the land,
is a memorial of
English feeling, which has
a right to be kept inviolate > and its just praise
willbe better understood, when it comes to
be purified from the mistake, which either a
careless abusive usage, or an unpractised and
inexperienced policy in the extent of its first

enactment, may have combined with it. It is


the page of mercy in a book which has to deal
much, of necessity, in severer things; and there
is a spirit of Christian kindness in it, particular-
ly fitted to recommend
the whole authority of
law, as a system framed for the well-being of its
subjects. I would therefore as soon see the best
clause of Magna Charta erased from the vo-
lume of our primary authentic
liberties, as this
text of humane legislation from our statute-
book. And if in the course of a remote time,
the establishments of liberty and humanity,
which we now possess, are to leave us, and
the spirit of them to be carried to other
lands, I trust this one record of them will

survive, and that charity by law will be a frag-


ment of English history, to be preserved
wherever the succession of our constitution,
or religion, shall go.
We have been considering the relief of the

rara^b
96

permanently disabled. In cases of temporary


inability to work, from sickness, I incline to
think there ought to be no positive legal re-
lief, unless it
might be after a certain du-
ration of illness ; but to exclude it
altogether
would be safer. This case however will be
considered hereafter.

The remaining the vast body of able


class,
labourers who have been drawn to a depen-
dence upon an artificial support, furnish a sub-
ject of another kind of consideration. Yet
here, as appears to me, it is not that the con-
it

clusion of the question relative to them is so


doubtful in itself, as it is unwelcome ; viz. That
the present law is
wholly erroneous in its prin-

ciple. But to act rightly, we must under-


stand things as they are, whether that view of
them be welcome, or not, and adapt our pro-
ceedings to them. I must be allowed then to

repeat here in substance, some general opinions,


which I have previously submitted to considera-
tion ; I dare not say they have been well esta-
blished, but they have been reasoned upon,
and they certainly have a strong appearance
of being well founded viz. That the law has :

not sufficiently measured its own power, at


least for the present state of commerce, when
97
it undertook to find work for labourers out
of employ : that it has charged itself with an

impracticable duty, which ought to be con-


sidered as void by the tenour of it that the :

name and pretext of such an obligation, on the


part of the law, weakens the most necessary and
most praiseworthy habits of the working classes;
and substitutes for their own sobriety, economy,
discretion, management of their own affairs, a
fictitious and a fallacious guardianship of them,
detrimental to their comforts and enjoyments,
as well as their duties, and adverse to the public

prosperity. On these accounts it is


highly ex-
pedient, that the indiscreet interference which
the law has made in the regular system of the

public industry should be retracted, after a


certain time, as soon as suitable arrangements
can be matured for that purpose.
As an illustration of the inability of the law
to execute any general promise of supplying
work, I may mention cases of the most ordi-
nary occurrence, which shew that it is
hardly
feasible, in the coarsest way, to furnish even
unproductive work. Servants who know no
trade at all, nay, artificers of many trades, how
can they be set to work every chance month
or fortnight, when they are out of regular

employ ? Must there be a workhouse in every

H
98
parish; and must these dependents go into it
for that month or
fortnight ? If they are to
live at home, how are they to render the

work, and how be disposed of? Still


is it to
there ought to be work demanded, if able la-
bourers are to draw any support from the pa-
rish. And if this principle of supporting them
is to be upheld, some most troublesome, and
most ineffectual expedients must be contrived,
to furnish the course of work. The right con-
clusion from the whole is, that a measure which
must be so executed ought not to be at-
ill

tempted ; since no machinery of plan can ever


be constructed, in which to embody the prin-

ciple of it.
As to the support of children, the general

adoption of them by the parish is a solecism


against the simple and powerful politics of na-
ture. And the parish could take better care of
if

them than it ever can be expected to do, yet it


has no right to dissolve the most sacred obli-

gations between parents and children obliga- ;

tions founded upon the will of the Creator, and


to be maintained only by the nursing care of the

parent's exclusive protection, and the returns of


duty in requital of that protection. The vir-
filial

tue of the marriage union is also equally reduced


and degraded, when that union is contracted
99
without a stipulation of the parental care for the
support of the offspring. And since the domestic
virtues of the poor make up so large a share of
their duty, and their natural affections are the

beginnings and best hopes of whatever is


good
in their character, any law which turns this

order of natural duty out of its course is radi-

cally wrong towards the poor; and for their


sake it
ought to be most spu-
altered. It is the

rious humanity which discharges them from


their virtues.
Witha view then to restore the family vir-
tues of the poor to their just estimation among
them ;
and to direct the able labourer to trust
to his own resources, in his frugality, and as-

siduity, and recommendations of character, for


his support, and to restore him to the inde-

pendence of being intrusted with his own


affairs suppose that for a certain term
;
I shall

of years the present law is to remain in force,


in its whole practice relative to children, and
to able labourers; and consider what are
some of the means and opportunities of mend-
ing their affairs, and putting them into a better
condition, if they choose it, which the poor
would have, either in the mean time, or at the
commencement of a better practice.
For convenience' sake, the labouring popula-
H 2
100
tion may be classed under two kinds, manu-

facturing and agricultural. There are many


indeed who are distributed through the busi-
ness of town and country, who do not come
within the precise meaning of such a division,

having nothing to do either with the fabric of


commodities, or with tillage of the earth. But
the pure labourers of the country, and the pure

manufacturing workmen, compose the chief


muster of our people,and go far in making up the
whole working population of the country: and
since also they are the makers of our whole
internal produce, natural and artificial
together,
they have the most important part of our for-
tunes in their hands. The healthy, thriving,
and well-organized condition of these two de-
partments of labour, must therefore be itself a
great portion of our internal prosperity, and
communicate through the rest of the state
something of their prosperous condition.
For the country, I assume, that if the poor
rates were withdrawn from their connexion

with labour, the wages of labour would rise. I

assume with much more confidence, that, in

such an event, they ought to rise, on two separate

grounds. The farmer, hitherto, has palpably spe-


culated upon the poor rates in his bargain with
his men; this has been the general practice ac- :
101

cording to the farmer's own calculations there-


fore he ought to advance his wages, if the poor
rates should no longer enter into them as a

part. But there isanother and better ground


to expect that rise of wages: inasmuch as the

probable improvement in carefulness, attention


to his master's interest, and desire to gain his

good-will, on the part of the labourer, would


make his service worth more than it is now.
For the parish relief, though often reckoned
bona fide by both master and labourer as part
of wages, has not the effect of wages in quick-

ening the labourer's heart for his work. It is

like manure laid upon land, with the invigo-


rating juices and fermenting powers of it quite
gone before it is laid. In this advance of
wages which we might expect to follow, is

there any good cause to think the farmer or


landlord would lose by it ? I do not wish to pre-
tend to any great foresight in such matters, in
which indeed, except an ordinary observer,
as

I have had little concern or experience but on ;

general principles, I should risk this kind of


calculation, that the landed property of Eng-
land would save in rates more than it would
have to pay in wages, if the labourer's wages
were more exclusively connected with his

work ancl if they circulated through


;
his

H 3
102
heart, as inducement and reward, instead of
through the parish books, as matter of strife
and dependence, and worthlessness of service.
In the country, the labouring class, if they
chose it, and were either trained, or reduced,
to the best management of their own in-

terest,might establish themselves in greater


comfort and ease of condition, independently
of the 'advance of their wages. They have re-
sources and facilities not to be had in towns.
Their garden, their potatoe ground, their specu-
lations in pork and poultry, and other inci-
dents of a simple course of management, are at
hand, in addition to the leading task and duty of
their hired labour, to promote their subsist-

ence, and without diminishing their com-


petence for their main service. The very
quiet, and comparative solitude of the country,
are circumstances favourable to habits of occu-

pation and domestic attachment. This is the


posture of the labourer's condition an ac- ;

count of what he might be, if he availed him-


self, or were more obliged to avail himself, of
the opportunities before him. If it be called
a plausible story, I answer, we must know per-

fectly well, that, with or without the Poor Laws,


men will never be as well-conditioned as the
fairer side of their possible fortune might pro-
103
mise for them. Farms and villages will have
no resemblance to paradise, till the inhabitants
of them shall be much more perfect than hu-
man laws in their best state can make them.
But what then? Is it nothing to obstruct many
of the natural opportunities and happy invita-
tions of their condition, and remove many of
the inducements to their virtue? If the labour-

ing classes have not the discretion, sobriety,


and ready spirit to improve some of the ad-
vantages, in the planning of their affairs, which
manifestly their situation offers ;
the Poor
Laws only add more on the side
a reason the
of their misconduct, and almost acquit them of
the blame of it. Take away the Poor Laws,
and there would be improvidence, waste of
time, ignorance and carelessness in men about
their own business, and misery still. But no-
thing of checked by those laws, but
all this is

some jiegrees of it added by them and that :

is their demerit.
The agriculture of the country its mass in

is capable of vast extension and improvement.


There therefore scope in the possibility of
is

things to the increased application of labour in


a proportionable extent. What are the modes
of promoting that improvement, of animating
both the agriculture and the labourer together,
H4
104

by any arrangements in the system of rural


business, is
great subject for the inquiry,
a
and the public-spirited endeavours of those
who have their science, or their property,
vested in the soil of the country. But the earth
itself at least is not as yet in fault, if we are

insufficiently fed. The inequality of cultiva-


tion at present is not to be wholly resolved
into difficulties in the supply of means, nor

original unkindliness in the soil, nor any


other local hindrance. There is a defect ;
and
apparently it is for want of exertion, or want
of knowledge. The very weeds of the king-
dom might employ some thousands of hands
more; and since a blade of corn will grow
where the weed is taken away, an extension
of superior accuracy, carefulness, and diligence
of farming would be a certain quantity of
work and subsistence added at once. But
whilst the improvement in the higher province
of farming is to be expected from the spirit of
our agricultural societies, and the propagation
of example and instruction communicated by
them, the humbler essays of the labourer's own
department want to be assisted: and it would
repay the trouble to any man of a good heart,
and some knowledge of the business, who would
put the common villager, or labourer, in the
105

way of understanding the little resources which


he has and turning them to ac-
in possession,

count, not by writing books upon it which


never reach his cottage, but by a closer inter-
course with his capacities, capable of direction,
and with his feelings, capable of
being trained.
The art and method of being a cottager would
make an insipid treatise it would be a most
;

productive practical study. And that the poli-


tical economists not think too meanly of
may
its value, let them say whether the live-stock
of a cottager, of whatever size or kind, and the

produce of his garden, are not real subsistence,


and subsistence added to the whole public store :

whereas the pay of the parish only gives him


a title to consume some part of that which
has been raised already. The whole value
however of such an improvement in the me-
thods of the labourer, will depend upon their

being taken up at his own cost, upon his own


risk. Donations of land, which cannot be
general, neat cottages built to his hand, and
other artifices of humanity, do not help the
condition of the class, upon any certain and

permanent principles. The labourer must con-


tinue to work in that character still, from first

to last. And then the additions to his comfort


will never be at the risk of disturbing the
106

c system of the country. reckon upon these


I

accessions of subsistence, not as the foundation


of his main support and livelihood, but only as
an equivalent to him in part for his parish re-
lief j which turns his mind wholly away from
them. And
excepting the inherent and un-
changeable fault of human nature, which must
be an equal datum on every side, there is no
one reason so likely to explain why our paro-
chial poor in the country are so deficient in

intelligence, in activity, in good sense about


their own interests, as that they have been

kept in a state of pupillage, and not per-


mitted to think for themselves to the extent
even of their next day's support. One moral
use of the necessities of men seems to be that
of calling forth their understanding. Com-
mon reason absolutely must begin at that
point, of a stimulating necessity : and the la-

bour of thought is the last labour that men


will take up, if they can in any way do with-
out it.

There one method in which small grants


is

of land might perhaps be made safely and be-

neficially ;
that is, in cases of enclosure, by one
general arrangement with the poor of the
whole parish, the grants being made as an
equivalent for all demands upon the parish for
107
ever, with the reservation only of the re-
lief in old age. It is too obvious, that the
absolute discharge of the parish is a necessary

stipulation. For if the parish had still to pro-


vide generally for the population, other poor
would soon appear in the vacant places ; and
the whole charge in a given time would be the
more by all the value of the grants made. With-
out the opportunity of an enclosure, would it be

impolitic, or impracticable, for the landowners


to redeem their property in the same absolute
manner, in some parishes, by a compensation
in small portions of land, or tenements, exone-

rating the whole parish in perpetuity ? Those


grants, upon some purely
a fair estimate, in

agricultural parishes, would make


the poor
small proprietors, but by no means indepen-
dent of a hired service of labour. I lay no

stress upon this. It is a measure which could

be adopted, if it all, only in a few places: and I


mention it
merely in passing.

The manufacturing labourers, who are the

other class to be considered, are brought to


distress by two causes, differing from each
other their own habits of and changes
life,

in the prosperity of their commerce. Of the


two, their own habits are their worst evil,
108
in the degree of quite as much as the blame
it,

of it. Their wages are so high in good times,


that if they worked steadily and lived with
moderation, they might very well reserve
out of them a fund of supply against a time
of want, which would carry them through,
till their trade revived, or till
they had settled
and adapted themselves to some new occupa-
tion. But the whole history of their life is
of the most opposite kind, as far as it can be

comprised in anyone general description. The


excesses of these men, in their intemperance
and prodigality, the rashness and recklessness
of their expenditure, their division of the week
into days of work, and days .of the most gross
and obstinate idleness, and the unfeeling neg-
lect of their families, are some of the striking
lines in the character of our manufacturing

population. In numerous instances, the indi-

gence of these people, which the law takes


such anxious and extraordinary pains to re-
lieve, impliesmore of real moral delinquency,
and more harm to society, than many of the
crimes for which our most severe penal statutes
have been framed. And one consequence of
such a life is, that when it meets with any check,
they have such distempered and extravagant
notions of a necessary support, as make them
109

ready to spurn the fare and diet which other


people hardly enjoy in the times of their most
perfect competence. They become destitute
and unreasonable at once. Their wants are not
the wants of other men. Upon a round estimate,
it would not be asserting too much, that these
labourers are perfectly well able to maintain
themselves from year to year. Their income

might be made both a present and a future


support. The excess of their earnings at one
time, (or of what they might earn,) above a
fair substantial maintenance, would fully meet

the deficiency of them at another, under the


ordinary fluctuations of their trade. The means
are there; they only want to be more evenly
distributed. They are the men of all others
who need to be taught the value of that trite

maxim, that "frugality is a fortune," quam mag-


num vectigal sit parsimonia ; and none have the
power of learning it more successfully, since
they have only to practice their frugality upon
an abundance. The blank days of idleness
in the manufacturer's which
are quite a
life,

matter of choice with him, have this further


effect, they make a greater number of
that
hands necessary for any brisk flow of work;
and then when slackens, they are propor-
it

tionably incommoded by their numbers. Their


110

idleness, in times of work, reproduces a forced


and necessary loss of work in the sequel;
v jvhich they might avoid, if they pleased.
The system of manufactures then may be con-
sidered as circulating among its dependents,

though not evenly and uniformly, a stock of


wages fully adequate to the wants of those
dependents: only the inequality of circula-
tion must be met by a certain line of con-
duct very different from that which these
men now pursue; and pursue with the great-
er confidence, under the bill of indemnity
granted them beforehand by the Poor Laws.
Reformation of their manners to any degree
of sobriety, providence, or domestic care,
would be both a moral and political bene-
beyond every other. Every thing that can
fit,

be done towards it deserves to be encou-


raged. And
every thing that can be done is
not more than is necessary. Education, reli-
gious instruction, and whatever else can be
applied, will all find work here for their larg-
\ est endeavours. But instruction, whether to
old or young, must be futile in the end, if the

law continues to speak, as it now does, and with


a great practical force, in a sense opposite to all
sound instruction. The best education would
tell a person to do many things, which the
Ill
law would him he need not do, which is
tell

nearly the same thing as telling him he ought


not to do them. could only be a conflict
It

between the law and his education. Why


should not these two powers be made to act
in some harmony with each other?
But I have had in view only the ordinary
changes of commerce in its shorter intervals
of fluctuation, from month to month, or from

year to year, when I have stated it as my belief,


that their own economy in the
manufacturing
labourers might fully meet the inconvenience
of these changes. There are great reverses in
manufacturing commerce, which occasionally
convulse the system so far, that only an extra-

ordinary relief from other resources can sup-


port the people who have been engaged in it,

when their loss of work becomes general in


any great branch of it.
Against such rarer
emergencies of distress and indigence, some
fund of relief ought to be in expectation.
And in the other general estimate, the estimate

taken upon a comparison between their means


and the common current risk of a failure of
those means, there would always, from the

very mixt nature of the manufacturing life,


be a variety of cases eluding the estimate,
112

though correct upon the whole; and for these


arrears of distress, equally, some fund of re-
lief ought to be provided. For these dis-
tresses in some measure grow out of the pub-

lic prosperity ; they ought therefore to be, in


part, relieved by the public. They grow still

more out of the habits of the men them-


selves ;
and on that side they ought not to be
relieved.

obvious that Provident Banks, which


It is

are like the secreting organs of the economy


of the labouring are exactly and espe-
class,

cially adapted to the use of the manufacturing

population, under the variableness of its means


of income. They give a machinery for the eco-
nomical habit to work with. And wherever any
other machinery is at work, this one species of
it should be there,
by the side of it, to take up,
and turn to future use, the overflowings of its
produce. These institutions of economy have
made less progress, I believe, hitherto in the

manufacturing counties, than in many others.


Is this slow adoption of a benefit precisely

made them, owing to the extreme exhaus-


for
tion of those counties ; or to another cause, and
a cause intimately connected with their welfare
in a thousand points of view the absence of
113
the guiding care and influence of men of
weight, character, and public spirit, to give

things a proper direction ?


To bring matters to a close then, I conceive
ita fair presumption, that, if a certain term
were given to the present general practice of our
Poor Law to remain in force, there are available
resources and opportunities, which can be
specified, to furnish a substitute for the gratui-
tous or artificial relief nowgranted to the
labouring classes ; a substitute, not to cover
every probable degree of their necessary want,
but the most considerable portion of it and it is ;

only fair to assume, that there are other resources


and opportunities, though they cannot be speci-
fied, but which a quick-sighted industry, exer-

cising its wits in its own concerns, would discover


for itself. And in the mean time, if a vigilant
and correct administration of the present legal
charity were applied, the habits of parochial
dependence might be reduced, and the actual
need of it reduced in the same degree. In this

way, the more from parochial


direct transition

dependence to independent exertion, would be


rendered easier, as it would be narrowed to
a change of less extent especially if there
:

should be a strong and general concurrence


of feeling in the country, in promoting so
114

salutary an improvement, and preparing the


way for it. Much will depend here not upon
circumstances, but upon men. A decided im-
pulse upon the public mind and judgment,
emanating from Parliament, circulating through
the country, and not interrupted in its course

by non-conductors, who explode the subtle


fluid of communication, instead of passing it on,

might ensure the successful and satisfactory


reception of every measure of amendment that
could be wished.
But still, many cases of distress, from the
immense variety of the circumstances of life,
would remain, requiring a distinct provision.
Consequently some known fund of relief ought
to succeed to the contracted disbursement of
the parochial revenue. And a fund of volun-

tary contribution from the rich, which has been


recommended, indisputably the most proper
is

for that purpose. It should be a fund of stated


and regular times of contribution, measuring
itself by the benevolence and the discretion
of the contributors, applied to their respec-
tive parishes. I need not enlarge upon the

security of these voluntary supplies. The be-


nevolent of the people of England in
spirit

Pecuniary Contribution, is a source of supply


which I shall not fear to include in our most
115
certain prospects. The exercise of that bene-
volent spirit itself, in the offices of a personal

kindness, in a real intercourse of sympathy


with the wants and sufferings of the poor,
has been too much superseded; and the rich
have been great losers by the general substi-
tution of a legal impost, for the natural cul-
tivation of their own living, active, and dis-

criminating virtue. Reversing the attributes


of that mercy which is said to be twice blest,
in him that gives, and in him that takes,
bur legal alms are bestowed without charity,
as, with a full retaliation of sentiment, they
are received without gratitude. I would not

pretend to say, that the bare relief of the


keener wants of nature may not be as effectual
to the poor, when it comes from the iron
hand of a formal and constrained beneficence,
as when it is blest with the kindness of the
giver's heart.But human beings are not mere
machines capable of hunger and food, and
there is much more in them to be studied and
consulted, than the satisfaction of their purely
animal wants. Society therefore, which, in the
great Order of things, was meant to promote
the utmost attainable good of the human race,
Will depend for its best feeling and spirit upon
the interchange of a real good-will and re-
I 2
116
fleeted kindness, between its divided members,

quite as much as it owes its fundamental secu-


rity of order to the positive enactments
of law.
In this point of view, to reinstate charity in
its own powerful character among the rich,
and to restore the correspondent feeling due to
it
amongthe poor, might be of itself a reason
sufficient for the revision of our prevailing

system. It may deserve to be noticed, whilst


we are on this subject, that when the legal

grant of a general relief was first made, there


was one great difference in the state of things
compared with the present time. The opu-
lence of the country was then in the hands of
a few. Its wealth was not diffused, nor dis-

tributed, as it is now : and its distribution is

a greater change of things, than the increase of


it, large as that increase has been. The relief
of indigence of any kind could not therefore
be expected so well from any competent supply
of private beneficence.

The Following Sketch would more represent


clearly the ground-work of amendment, which
these considerations seem to chalk out, if the

practical reason of them is allowed.


I. The
provision of the law for the Disabled
Poor in old age, or under incurable infirmity,
117
to be continued in full force; and to be im-
proved and augmented hereafter.
II. The present practice of parochial relief,

in its several kinds, to Able Labourers, to be

continued without exception for ten years, being

placed, in the mean time, under a morejudicious

management.
After the expiration often years, no ne-
III.

cessary relief by law to be granted to Able


Labourers. But in every parish, a voluntary

subscription in lieu of itbe substituted, for


to

their relief. A separate trust of management


to be appointed for this subscription, indepen-
dent of the Overseer, who would continue to
have the administration of the legal relief to the

decayed poor.
Ageneral enactment would express, that
after the term of ten years, no person should
demand legal relief, in consideration of his
being out of work. Another enactment, that
after that time, no person should demand legal
relief in consideration of his having children,
the offspring of a marriage contracted prior to
the passing of the law (Unless he had Three
;

at least under the age of Fifteen.)


IV. With
regard to children, the offspring
of a marriage contracted subsequently to the
first
passing of the law, that from the date
I 3
118
of the amended law no person should demand

any legal relief whatever on their account.

At the expiration of ten years, then, there


would be a legal revenue for the support of
the aged and infirm: a voluntary contri-
bution for others and in addition to the
:

charge, for the aged and infirm, upon that legal


revenue, might be added, the relief also of cer-
tain definite cases of severer distress, to be
distinctly specified in the enactment; as in
families including Three children under the
age of Fifteen and, in families deprived of a
;

father; and perhaps, in long continued sick-


ness. Under Fifteen, children do not earn
much : at least if therebe Three of them,
there may be some difficulty in their mainte-
nance. The inhabitants of Workhouses, who
might then be found in them, would be con-
tinued there, drawing their support, as before,
from the parochial assessments, till that class
of persons should have passed away.
The simplest, and the most equitable, amend-
ment of all, would be that which referred the
entire charge of children, the offspring of a

marriage contracted subsequently to the pass-


ing of the amended law, to the care of the
parents. And this is the only application I
119
have intended to be made of the equitable
rigour, in all its closeness, of a law to be purely
prospective. The marriage so contracted,
would be wholly independent of any artificial
inducement; the parents themselves would un-
derstand and appreciate their proper character ;

and in that character would pledge them-


selves provide for their offspring upon
to
the principles of a natural duty. The alle-
viation of the parochial burthens, and the
redress of much abuse of the parochial law,
under the effect of this one regulation, would
be immediate, silent, and progressive. It would
be a Sinking Fund created upon the existing
evil. Another race, born and reared under
happier auspices, would be springing up. The
good habits and example of the parents, which
they would not be able to sacrifice with impu-
nity, would reckon both
for themselves, and for

the propagation of a healthier feeling among


others. Such parents and families would take
the lead in helping to restore the deteriorated

spirit,
as well as condition, of their whole class

in the community.

In casting an eye forward to the general state


of our labouring people, under a system amend-
ed after some such method as I have been de-
120

scribing, we might them as furnished


consider
with the following inventory and apparatus of
means, for their whole stock in hand or in hope.
On one side, their own energies and understand-
ing more steadily directed to their own interests
and duties ; which, under the blessing of Provi-
dence, is the poor man's strong ground. On
the other, a fixed provision by law for certain de-
finite cases of indigence, particularly in old
age.
Secondly, the various aid of public and local en-
dowed establishments of charity. Thirdly, a vo-
luntary stated parochial contribution, under a
public trust. Fourthly, the supplies of private be-
nevolence. These two last, the voluntary stated

parochial contribution, and the supplies of pri-


vate benevolence, are means of assistance, which
would be dispensed under a continual discre-

tion. The extent


of the assistance to be expect-
ed from them both together, is to be calculated
by the tried of the more opulent
liberality
classes in this country, which has never been

found deficient in the mere gift of money, and by


their power which when
to give, it varies, so

ought also the demands upon it.

I shall close these considerations with a single


remark upon the policy of the original act of the
reign of Elizabeth, which in the event has oc-
121

casioned us so much
trouble and anxiety. It is

possible that the very low state of the general


improvement of the country, at large, at that
was such, as to furnish the means of giving
time,
work and subsistence artificially by law, for a
long time, prospectively, to a growing popula-
tion, more readily and easily than at present ;
and the general imperfection of commerce,
and manufactures, which in the science of them
were less understood, and less brought into sys-
tem, might render not so very unskilful a
it

proceeding to take labour under a parochial


management. In many ways the law might be
either really useful then, or less inconvenient
than it now
while consequences since dis-
is:

closed and brought to an issue, dictate most

strongly another course to be pursued. It is a

light imputation upon the legislature of that


day, that they could not foresee, in a very
complex subject, all that would follow in the
course of three hundred years. But to
two or
ratify and bind for ever their inapplicable pro-
visions, will be a graver mistake than they in-
tended. They had the praise of establishing

charity by law. Improvidence, intemperance,


and manly, and inde-
forfeiture of domestic,

pendent character, established by law, is an-


other matter. We may be assured that the
122

present practice of our Poor Laws is in full


contradiction with the national character of
our people, and with the spirit of our consti-
tutional system. For there can be no greater
contradiction than between high rights of li-

berty, and mean personal qualities in those


who are to exercise them. I never see the
more disgracefulproceedings of an English
populace, but I wonder how such persons can
be found in such a country. Upon mature
thought, I see the law itself, in one instance,
contributing to make them what they are.

FINIS.

222
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